Overview

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway the third installment in the Brothers in Arms series from Gearbox. Each score has featured music by a different composer. Hell's Highway was co-written by Gearbox's software audio engineer Ed Lima along with Duncan Watt. The game's musical material tends to be reserved for menus instead of in-game play in this series. As a consequence, there is only a limited amount of material featured in this release.

Body

The opening "Main Theme" is cast in a big, romantic swath of patriotic martial music complete with wordless chorus reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. There is not a lot of time to develop the thematic idea here, just lay it out, though it will be the basis for much of what follows. A piano presentation of the theme briefly opens "The Story So Far" which quickly returns to the style and sound of the opening. Choral writing, wordless, is done in male and female choirs in alternation, reserving full choral statements for emphasis.

There are some wonderfully emotional moments that occur in the central portion of the tracks here. This first occurs in "The First Bad News" and then in the delicate opening bars of "For Matthew". Though in the latter, things move quickly into dissonant choral tone clusters to chilling effect. The technique is used a bit sparingly but works well when it appears.

The way that the primary theme moves through different orchestral solos and the that Lima and Watt explore different instrumental colors also adds to the enjoyment of the music. One thing that is refreshing is the use of acoustic percussion that allows for a lot more hall ambience than a drier drum machine. It is this richly recorded large orchestral sound that makes the music an engaging listening experience that is aided by the strong theme used in this particular score. A longer concluding track, "Farewell is Goodbye," works almost as a sort of end credits suite of material.

Summary

In conjunction with this score, Sumthing Else released the earlier two soundtracks in re-mastered recordings. Given the short playing time of this physical release, it is unfortunate that all three could not have been put together on a two disc set. Despite its brevity, Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is a very good score cast in a classic large orchestral style.