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Hollywood
Records
Music Composed by Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, and
Harry Gregson-Williams
Conducted by Nick Glennie-Smith, Bruce Fowler, and Don
Harper
Additional Music by Don Harper and Steven Stern
Orchestrated by Bruce Fowler, Suzette Moriarty, Ladd
McIntosh, Walt
Fowler, and Dennis Dreith
Produced by Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, Harry
Gregson-Williams, and Jerry Bruckheimer
Release Date: 1996
Purchase this CD at:
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The Rock is one of those scores that mostly
appeals to the die-hard action music fans out there in soundtrack land, being filled with
heavy orchestral hits, back beats, and even an electric guitar. Most of the time, these
quasi-rock ‘n roll scores are rather bland and have no redeeming qualities. However,
the Media Ventures crew managed to pull it off quite nicely with this one. This is
mainly due to the abundance of themes scattered everywhere. Instead of just incorporating
generic action music, The Rock is almost as thematically driven as scores by John
Williams or Jerry Goldsmith. This gives the style of music a much needed kick in the pants
along with the always delightful choral moments that can be found in a few sparse places.
The choir pieces are good, but it never gets around to vocalizing the main theme, which
would've been very cool if it was done with a lot of energy. While no less than five
composers are listed as working on the score, most of the credit goes to Nick
Glennie-Smith for this highly enjoyable album.
While the score is almost totally made up of action cues, the quieter
bits are excellent and are usually comprised out of the different themes. Most of the
tracks are at least over six minutes long, with the longest being fourteen minutes, but
due to the nature of the music that’s not really a problem. The music just keeps
building and there isn’t really many places where a track could be split. The two
exceptions to the really long tracks, Jade and Fort Walton – Kansas,
are good, but sound out of place with the rest of the tracks, even though some themes are
incorporated. In addition, some of the tracks are out of order chronologically.
If you love action scores, this is a CD that you cannot afford to be
without. I’ve listened to this one about as much as I did The Mummy (which was
quite a lot), and I have yet to tire of it. This is one score which will have many hours
of playing time in my stereo system. *****
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