European Assault

With the career that Michael Giaachino has now, it's almost strange to think back to when his biggest claim to fame was scoring the Medal of Honor games for the first Playstation console system. It was definitely the launching pad for a stellar career. But with the composing shoes vacated, it would take a special talent to step up and continue the tradition of fine, Hollywood-quality scores that would continue the series. And step up composer Christopher Lennertz has. His first title for the series, Rising Sun, was a great attempt that was hampered by cues that were too short to properly develop where he was going with the material (either necessitated by the demands of video game scoring or by the production of the score album). It was a shame since the material he was developing for those sequences, if allowed to expand beyond a minute or two in length, would have been something very special. As it was, it turned out to be a nice freshman-level entry to this series for the composer and one that would mark him as a fitting successor to Giacchino's work.

This marks the third score Lennertz has done for the Medal of Honor series (after Pacific Assault for the PC). The album may be short, but at least the cues have room to grow, as most of them are around three minutes in length. This is a noticeable improvement as Lennertz is allowed to let the music evolve through the cues as it should and while it may not have as many exciting moments as Rising Sun, it's a more solid entry. The orchestra itself is quite impressive, though perhaps just a tad less than the astounding quality that was present for Giacchino's last Medal of Honor score, Frontline. That said, the music here is very loud and brassy, with plenty of strong percussion moments and a lot of good spots that will rattle the speakers. There is a noticeable lessening of choral moments for the most part, but since it had started to become too much of a staple, I don't mind Lennertz moving things in a different direction every now and then.

When Spielberg released Saving Private Ryan, it set the standard by which pretty much all of the War genre films have followed since then. Part of those standards involved dropping the musical underscore of battle scenes. Since films have been lax in providing that element in their scores, it has been a nice idea that the Medal of Honor series returned to. Lennertz doesn't spend all of his time on powerful action cues, but they are definitely here and continue the tradition that I have loved about this series. The main theme, first established in the "Dogs of War" cue, mixes the correct elements of heroism and the horrors of war, all the elements that a proper WW2 theme should have. Best of all, Lennertz incorporates it in various ways throughout the score, bringing a lot of cohesion and creating lots of great little moments where he punctuates an intense passage by ending with either the whole theme or at least a noticeable portion of it.

It may seem disappointing that the album only has a running time of just over thirty minutes, but in this instance I believe that less is more. By allowing the cues to remain a proper length and keeping the album from having to fill up with material, the score comes across as taunt and very well defined, making for an enjoyable listen. Available only through online music stores, there's not in the way of extra material that so polished the former Medal of Honor scores, but for the music itself, this is as good an album as any to add to your (hopefully) existing collection of these scores.

Reviewed on April 17, 2006