Overview

Gearbox's popular game series, Brothers in Arms, received a revisit musically in 2008 when Sumthing Else re-released the music from the first two installments of the series dating from 2005. The Brothers In Arms Road to Hill 30 Original Soundtrack was an exclusively digital release, but incidentally the most comprehensive of the series' album releases to date.

Body

The soundworld of Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 inhabits that of Saving Private Ryan managing to all but match the slow build up of the big emotional moments of John Williams' music. The opening march could easily be mistaken for many of that composer's other emotional patriotic concert works or scores. The main theme which follows continues in this same vein with Harwood's music making for a an equally moving experience. There is more room in these tracks for the composer to grow his ideas more, often in the span of three to four minutes. Roughly the opening quarter of the tracks are variations on this martial style.

Each subsequent track takes on a different interlude in the game itself. These feature some intriguing orchestral choices in themselves. "Night of Nights" manages to maintain a big Hollywood sound with an overlay of dissonant ideas of intriguing bell lines that bear a resemblance to the like of Messiaen of Dutilleux. This orchestral style is used break up the more traditional post-romantic dramatic writing as the score progresses allowing for tension to be created in these scene set ups. It tends to appear in stronger dissonant segments of the score sometimes moving wildly out of tonal territory ("Objective XYZ") which is made possible because there is time for Harwood to unleash these sounds before returning to more accessible thematic writing

.Also worth noting is how Harwood takes smaller motivic ideas and slowly builds them into extended thematic statements. The score has a chance to really breathe throughout the presentation here making it quite an engaging listen, especially in the "Reunion Theme".

Summary

Overall, the Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 is recommended for those who enjoy war film scores. While not particularly original, it is impressive from a thematic perspective and benefits from breathtaking performances from the FILMharmonic Orchestra and Choir. Readers should seriously consider giving its relatively comprehensive digital release a thorough listen.