S7285644: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Soundtrack

[Arcubalis]

Composer credits confirmed via Glenn Stafford/Russell Brower at Blizzard Entertainment.

This album is really good. One of the best from Blizzard in a long while.

[Arcubalis]

And yes, for those who weren't aware, Jason Hayes is back at Blizzard.

[Doublehex]

Originally Posted by Arcubalis

Composer credits confirmed via Glenn Stafford/Russell Brower at Blizzard Entertainment.

This album is really good. One of the best from Blizzard in a long while.

Please tell me this is a joke. This is one of the absolute worst soundtracks I have ever heard.

[Arcubalis]

Originally Posted by Doublehex

This is one of the absolute worst soundtracks I have ever heard.

This is one of the absolute worst comments I ever read?

What about it is bad?

[LiquidAcid]

Originally Posted by Arcubalis

What about it is bad?

And what about it is good?

[Jormungand]

I'm excited to hear this, but I'm irritated by these long track compilations. Why not split them up? This was done on the Wings of Liberty album too, and it actually hurt the overall quality of the album. Because they were trying to shove so many tracks together, a lot of material was cut from certain tracks. For example, the "Terran Theme 1" was nearly cut in half and sounds awful.

Hey, Blizzard, we just want the music from the game!

[Doublehex]

Originally Posted by Arcubalis

This is one of the absolute worst comments I ever read?

What about it is bad?

It has no sense of harmony of melody, for one. There is no sense of any sort of progression with any of the cues. It's all BLAARGH. GHAAARH. TECHNO. NO SENSE OF MUSICAL IDENTITY WHATSOEVER. GUITAR RIFT THAT IS WASHED OUT BY BLAAARGH.

It's disgusting. It's not even music. It's noise. A absolutely disappointing show of force from Blizzard. I'm hoping this was this a temporary setback due to the Zerg's "musical" identity being ambient, and when we get to the Protoss we'll have a good score again.

[Arcubalis]

Well, I think the album is highly textural (the Zerg). I like ambient, so I guess that's what I like about it.

And every time the Terran stuff comes in, the rocking guitar stuff, I was digging that. "Stronger" actually reminded me an awful lot of Halo, in a good way.

But yeah, in terms of 7-minute long tracks as opposed to breaking them up, talk to Russell Brower. He wants their soundtracks produced to tell the story of the game in a cohesive way as opposed to just being a dump of all the cues from the game. Since he came on board for Burning Crusade, every main Blizzard album has been formatted this way. I personally like it, although it'd be cool if they provided data files of the individual cues featured in each suite.

[Jormungand]

Originally Posted by Arcubalis

W
But yeah, in terms of 7-minute long tracks as opposed to breaking them up, talk to Russell Brower. He wants their soundtracks produced to tell the story of the game in a cohesive way as opposed to just being a dump of all the cues from the game. Since he came on board for Burning Crusade, every main Blizzard album has been formatted this way. I personally like it, although it'd be cool if they provided data files of the individual cues featured in each suite.

Interesting.

I'm still not crazy about his entry into Blizzard or his particular cinematic take on music. I don't think Blizzard really needed the position he is filling. I also don't understand the addition of freelance artists onto SC2 when the in-house team is perfectly capable (honestly, I'd be quite pleased if Stafford and Duke handled everything from now on).

That said, I wonder why Blizzard doesn't at least offer digital downloads of the full SC2 soundtrack. I'm really not interested in this new cinematic stuff; I want the in-game BGM. The meat of the soundtrack.

I'm still quite excited to hear HotS's soundtrack given that Stafford was the audio lead this time around. I hope there's more variety in the Zerg music, as I felt Duke went a little too "hard" for SC2 vanilla when compared with the more surreal, electronic Zerg sound of the original SC.

[Doublehex]

Originally Posted by Jormungand

Interesting.

I'm still not crazy about his entry into Blizzard or his particular cinematic take on music. I don't think Blizzard really needed the position he is filling. I also don't understand the addition of freelance artists onto SC2 when the in-house team is perfectly capable (honestly, I'd be quite pleased if Stafford and Duke handled everything from now on).

That said, I wonder why Blizzard doesn't at least offer digital downloads of the full SC2 soundtrack. I'm really not interested in this new cinematic stuff; I want the in-game BGM. The meat of the soundtrack.

I'm still quite excited to hear HotS's soundtrack given that Stafford was the audio lead this time around. I hope there's more variety in the Zerg music, as I felt Duke went a little too "hard" for SC2 vanilla when compared with the more surreal, electronic Zerg sound of the original SC.

I'm going to have to disagree with you big time there. Brower was *exactly* what Blizzard needed. He created a thematic, orchestral identity to Blizzard's universe that was missing before his arrival. Vanilla WoW had not a good piece of music, excluding the main menu theme and the cues composed by Jason Hayes. With Brower we got music with orchestral prowess.

Now I am not saying he is Goldsmith or Williams caliber, but the quality of music went up big time when Brower came on board.

[Jormungand]

Originally Posted by Doublehex

I'm going to have to disagree with you big time there. Brower was *exactly* what Blizzard needed. He created a thematic, orchestral identity to Blizzard's universe that was missing before his arrival. Vanilla WoW had not a good piece of music, excluding the main menu theme and the cues composed by Jason Hayes. With Brower we got music with orchestral prowess.

Now I am not saying he is Goldsmith or Williams caliber, but the quality of music went up big time when Brower came on board.

You're right that Brower's speciality is cinematic orchestral material. But I don't think Blizzard needed this. The quality of Blizzard's soundtracks was outstanding prior to Brower. Actually, scratch that--the quality of their soundtrack was outstanding prior to WoW.

WarCraft 2 was the absolute pinnacle of WarCraft music, entirely Stafford's creation. Each and every track, whether Human or Orc, was entertaining and melodically engaging. WarCraft has never sounded the same since, and it's sad Blizzard ordered a move away from this style and into a more atmospheric one just to accommodate the switch to 3D and cinematic cutscenes.

Starcraft was perfect, the trifecta of Stafford on Terran, Duke on Zerg, and Hayes on Protoss rounding out the unique identity of each race.

Diablo 1 & 2 were also perfect; Matt Uelmen has a capacity for atmosphere and texture that is layered and complex, and D3 absolutely failed to recapture that atmosphere (well, so did the game in general...)

I don't have a problem with Brower as a composer. But I don't find that he has brought anything meaningful to Blizzard's identity. If we're just talking about orchestral music, I strongly prefer both Uelmen's orchestral cues from Lord of Destruction and Stafford's MIDI orchestrations from W2 to Brower's Hollywood inclinations. I don't believe that (classic) Blizzard and Hollywood can possibly mesh.

[Doublehex]

I think I can summarize my thoughts as thus: everything you said, but the opposite.

Warcraft 2 was anything but the pinnacle of Blizzard's musical heights. It was catchy and interesting, and even fun, but it was no great piece of work.

StarCraft was a giant bore, excluding Jason Haye's cinematic cues. The same goes for WarCraft III. He produced the only good musical pieces from either of those products.

Uelmen when he isn't doing orchestral is an absolute bore. When he gets to do an orchestra he is a wonder to behold.

[MiLO]

Originally Posted by Doublehex

It has no sense of harmony of melody, for one. There is no sense of any sort of progression with any of the cues. It's all BLAARGH. GHAAARH. TECHNO. NO SENSE OF MUSICAL IDENTITY WHATSOEVER. GUITAR RIFT THAT IS WASHED OUT BY BLAAARGH.

It's disgusting. It's not even music. It's noise. A absolutely disappointing show of force from Blizzard. I'm hoping this was this a temporary setback due to the Zerg's "musical" identity being ambient, and when we get to the Protoss we'll have a good score again.

Just stating my opinion here. I think the soundtrack is not that bad. That Ghaarh-blaaargh stuff is a fitting theme to Zerg, and demonstrates well their chaotic and brutal nature. In our days that gaaarh-blarrh effect (no idea what to call it properly) is associated with epic badassory... not sure at what point exactly it became popular to do so, but I've started noticing it trailers for movies, games etc ever since Hans Zimmer's work on Inception (track "528491" for example).
Besides it's not like the whole score is a blend of techno with aggressive dubstep, as one might think by reading your comment. Other than "Heart of the Swarm" track I haven't found much of that rough noisy sound in the rest of the tracks. There's plenty of orchestral cinematic tracks here. And I think it would be boring if all 3 campaigns had rather similar orchestral presentations. You gotta mix them up, make them distinct. So that's what they're doing.
Another reason why I'm probably more favorable towards this soundtrack is because I don't mind techno.

[Jormungand]

I'm enjoying the in-game music so far. I booted up an AI match just to listen to the new Terran theme, it's awesome! (must be Stafford's work, too... is it on this album?)

[Mindphlux]

I was disappointed by this soundtrack quite a bit. Nothing special here. Hopefully the protoss one will be better.