Halo Original Soundtrack

A rich, immersive musical experience with only but a few hiccups along the way.

For Halo composers Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori have crafted a hypnotic blend of symphonic grandiosity, ethnic mysticism, and haunting vocal choruses that create a musical world that floats effortlessly from dark European classicism to thundering tribal rhythmatism, and detached monks-of-doom-styled vocal inflection. Toss in some intriguing synthetic enhancement and you've got one of the richer in-game scores of the past decade.

To fully wrap your ears around what O'Donnell and Salvatori have accomplished it's best to strap on a pair of headphones, dim the lights, and get ready for a fantastic voyage. The album, which clocks in at a whopping 1-hour, 6-minutes, and 34-seconds, starts with a bang and rarely lets up. "Opening Suite" is at first a mash of kinetic drums, then a swirl of aggressively angelic voices rising above nothingness, and eventually a stream of emphatic strings, creating a mix of emotions that run from excited to sublimely contemplative.

"Truth And Reconciliation Suite" is a bona fide headphone trip-out that takes symphonic bombast into overload with deep seated kettle drums, pervasive strings, and subtle sound effects that float from channel to channel. As its 8-minutes and 25-seconds would attest, it's rather epic in scope, encompassing elements of Celtic/Gaelic sounds along with taiko-styled drumming, and choral elements. Meanwhile "Brothers In Arms" is decidedly more militaristic in tone, thanks in large part to the steady snare drum cadence undermining the piece. The track does a 180 at the last minute, however, dipping into an almost romantic sense of introspection devoid of either drums or horns, but rather solely reliant on strings.

Strings continue to create an emotional balance that's more quietude than brash intensity at the outset of "Enough Dead Heroes." The track soon takes a turn for the dark and brooding, bringing back the steady march of the snare before slipping into an ethereal motif replete with drifting vocals and a bittersweet bass flutter. Electronic elements again meld with the symphonic to create an orchestral wash of mid-tempo electronic-cum-industrial light ambiance on "Perilous Journey." Where other videogame scores tend to miss their mark when combining electronic and organic elements, O'Donnell and Salvatori seem to have found a rather stable balance between the two divergent sounds.

While the title might suggest otherwise, "A Walk In The Woods" is not an airy, organic piece, but rather an electronic affair leaving behind any nuance of organic simplicity in favor of a loping bassline, drifting vocals, and a lulling sense of calm. In this way it totally evokes the image of the title, as it strolls along with beatific serenity. This same vibe is carried over into "Ambient Wonder," a down-tempo slice of electronic bliss. Meanwhile, intriguing rhythms bounce and juggle their way through "The Gun Pointed At The Head Of The Universe," which is one of the more ominously dark numbers on the album thanks to nothing but overlapping drums and beats surging, droning, and pounding. Even when some music enters the fray, it's streamlined and centered around a steady vocal drift and ambient drone.

"Trace Amounts" continues to evolve along the electronic spectrum, tossing in blips, bleeps, and other a sundry noize into a spacious rift of ambient texturing. In contrast "Under Cover Of Night" sounds like something lifted from the '80s (think of the keyboard stylings utilized by Van Halen, Rush, and Jan Hammer, for example), as it is built around a rumbling bassline and builds out with infectious shifts of tweaked vocals and ambient filtering. By this point in the album the score has dramatically shifted into much more electronic territory, as evidenced by "What Once Was Lost," a strange, aviary enhanced number.

Naturally, just as the duo has lured you into a warm sense of electronic comfort, they slip back into symphonic emotionalism with "Lament For Pvt. Jenkins, a string driven bit of melancholy. "Devils...Monsters..." expertly combines orchestration and electronics to create a diabolical chunk of menacing, albeit slow-burn, intensity. The electronic ping-ponging rhythms of "Covenant Dance" again evoke a sense of intergalactic tribalism. The added depth of a male vocal chorus only adds to the cross-cultural ambiguity. That it finally incorporates elastic synthesizer elements takes it to another level altogether, creating a sort of Tron-styled mutation.

"Alien Corridors" is all cascading bleeps and blurts, electronic nuance shimmering through a narrow hallway, propelled by gentle rhythms and swirling ambiance. The album takes a turn for the cheesy with "Rock Anthem For Saving The World," the one track that feels completely out of place. Granted O'Donnell and Salvatori implement chunks of the recurring Halo theme, but they top it off with garish '80s-era guitar histrionics. Thankfully it's only 1-minute and 18-seconds long and just as quickly forgotten. "The Maw" returns to the richly textured chorus, relying solely on disembodied voices and ambient noize to create a sense of mystery and awe.

"Drumrun" is yet another rhythm centric number, this time a little more in the vein of the cheesy "Rock Anthem," except with drums. Whereas the previous drum numbers tended to favor more mellow rhythm escapades, this one is aggressively electronic in nature. "On A Pale Horse" returns to more familiar--and welcomed—orchestral terrain. The strings nestled at the core of the track create a sense of urgency and dedication. On the other hand "Perchance To Dream," is much more sedate and otherworldly, living up to its namesake. "Library Suite" continues to deliver dreamscape/nightmarish wares, moving from stoic and shadowy to downright menacing with subtle shifts in tone and style.

Rhythm surge is once again the modus operandi on "The Long Run," using drums to create a sense of perpetual motion, enhancing the experience with light electronic embellishment. "Suite Anthem" brings back the unnerving penetration of strings, their shrill drone creating a sense of trepidation and mystery. "Shadows" continues along the same vein, though the addition of strange Eastern atonality, tribal drums, and squelching '80s metal guitar makes for a strange brew indeed.

The final two numbers on the album include "Dust And Echoes," which uses piercing strings to keep the listener on edge, offsetting the shrill nature with the quiet echo of an empty cave coupled with rich choral elements. With "Halo," the vocals continue to create an air of deep and dark mystery. It's complemented with rolling drums, surging strings, and other elements that have been used throughout the preceding 25 tracks. In short, it provides an epic bookend to the overall album.

Despite a few hiccups here and there (the uber cheestastic metal guitar bits) Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori's score for Halo is a rich and engaging collection of suites, cues, and songs. The use of orchestral, electronic, and vocal elements, not to mention the various sound effects and persistent reliance on rhythm make this one of the better videogame oriented musical experiences out there. In fact, it's solid enough that one wouldn't need to have any connection to the game in order to enjoy it. Just remember to fast forward through the hair metal excess (unless of course you dig that sort of stuff).

Definitely Download:
1. "Truth And Reconciliation Suite"
2. "Enough Dead Heroes"
3. "Perilous Journey"
4. "A Walk In The Woods"
5. "Under Cover Of Night"
6. "Covenant Dance"
7. "Library Suite"
8. "The Long Run"
9. "Halo"