Gears of War 3 has arrived and with it, a long line of marketing tie-ins, like this soundtrack from Sumthing Music. In fact, we even have a Gears of War Board Game review coming up as well.
But today, it’s all about the tunes from the final chapter of Gears of War (or is it?). As I said in the homepage preview, if the soundtracks of Dune (1984) and TRON: Legacy got together and made sweet, sweet music and had children, the Gears of War 3 soundtrack would be their first offspring.
That is, if the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack were its cousin and Hollywood the place of its birth, because it has a lot of Hollywood soundtrack in it.
The soundtrack for Gears of War 3 was done by none other than Steve Jablonsky with the help of the Northwest Sinfonia and loads of others. There are 31 tracks on the disc which add up to more than 75 minutes of music.
The opening track, Restless, sets the stage with an almost eerie singing that might remind some of another Xbox 360 exclusive, but soon gives way to the familiar sounds of Gears. While it reminded me more of the old 80’s Dune film, the second song reminded me of a much newer film.
Gears Keep Turning starts out with a sound much like TRON: Legacy but soon transforms into the very epitome of the Gears of War franchise with a new take on the finale from Gears of War 2, 
an almost updated version of that final song on the second soundtrack with some added choral parts that set it to rise above its darker predecessor. Jablonsky did not do the score on the original Gears of War, that was Kevin Riepl. Still, you can hear the precursor in that work to the latter. While the first soundtrack doesn’t have that same robustness of sound as the second and third is certainly was the foundation upon which these were built.
A lot of the tracks have an almost incidental music quality to them and that is furthered by their titles with track names like Meanwhile Below Deck, High Seas Tension, Calm Before Chaos, A Fine Mess and Paradise Found.
