Homefront Soundtrack review

Sumthing Else Music sent over the Homefront soundtrack for us to check out. The game, from THQ and developer Kaos Studios, is now available and I thought I would squeeze off this review.

The Homefront soundtrack starts off with Stand your Ground from Matthew Harwood and Scott Cresswell. Cresswell did the vocals, guitar and bass on the song and it reminds me of a slightly updated version of the 80’s Transformers film soundtrack. But it also reminds me of the song you would see over a montage of fight scenes from an action film, so it works quite well.

From there the soundtrack moves on to 33 orchestrated tracks and range from tense, percussive, incidental music pieces to grander sounding pieces with prominent horns and strings and slower more emotion-provoking compositions.

Back Yards , track 14, reminded me of a tune you would expect to hear as covert forces were moving into place as they set up for an attack against entrenched, superior odds.

Take the Shot opens with a helicopter like sound and then quickly descends into a heartbeat like ambient piece.

More action-oriented tracks include No Compromise which brought visions of fast moving attack vehicles, Gas Station which lent itself to an off-and-on chase sequence in my mind and Bridge Assault which began to slowly increase in tension until the battle was obviously fully engaged before turning somewhat triumphant near the end and bringing into focus a theme that seemed to run through several tracks.

All in all the soundtrack is definitely a roller coaster ride of excitement and emotion that easily brought visions of stealth, close-quarters and full blown battles to mind. The lead track gave a rock edge to it which was quickly fleshed out with excellent and wide-ranging orchestration. The extra tracks, of which Connor Morgan is my favorite because of its more celtic sound, added that extra bit of diversity to the end and in themselves do an excellent job of covering the emotions one would imagine they might face in events similar to Homefront.

I am no master nor even a student of musical theory, but after decades of video games and films I believe I have a firm grasp on the music of my chosen forms of entertainment and Homefront is one of the finer soundtracks of late. The wide range of orchestration evokes a full complement of emotions and images in the mind’s eye and really creates a great backdrop to what is sure to be a great game.

If you’re interested in checking it out further and purchasing or sampling, head over to Sumthing Else’s Distribution site. INdividual tracks are available for 99 cents each or the entire soundtrack for $9.99 downloaded. A CD will run you about $14-15 from Amazon.

The game is available on consoles and downloadable for PC from GamersGate.