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Medal of Honor: Frontline
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Composed, Co-Orchestrated and Produced by:
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Michael Giacchino
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Co-Orchestrated and Conducted by:
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Tim Simonec
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Availability:
Limited U.S. release, avaliable only through the EA Games online store.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if the maturity of Michael Giacchino's own style is what
you've considered lacking in the other Medal of Honor scores.
Avoid it... if you really have no confidence in the quality of any
score in a video game, despite its potential.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Giacchino | |
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Medal of Honor: Frontline: (Michael Giacchino) By the
time Medal of Honor: Frontline hit the gaming market in 2002, the
Medal of Honor concept was strongly established as a premiere war
game in the industry. After being recognized and awarded for his work on
Medal of Honor: Underground the previous year, Michael Giacchino was
also becoming an established force in the music industry, with offers
beginning to come in for a wider variety of scoring projects (though mostly
in television). Commissioned to write music for both Medal of Honor:
Frontline and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the latter only
required five new cues of material (and thus received no album release).
Medal of Honor: Frontline, however, thrusts the allies back into the
series of games with the daring, if not disastrous Operation Market Garden
(during which the Allies air dropped troops along the German "West Wall" to
capture a handful of strategic bridges on the Rhine River). For the return
of the Allies from the first game, Giacchino was originally asked to
contribute roughly an hour of music for the game. By the end of the
successful scoring endeavor, the composer had written and recorded nearly 75
minutes of score. Giacchino decided not to mess with the Medal of
Honor thematic equation to any great extent, choosing the revisit
several of the key themes from the first game (many of which were absent
from the second game due to its different set of characters). Interestingly,
the thematic material for the primary American character would be
restructured in an effort, as Giacchino would call it, to show how the
character had matured in the time that had passed since the battles and
adventures of the first game. Ironically, this maturation of that
character's theme mirrors the maturation of Giacchino's own work for the
entire series as well. Fans of the video game series will recognize, as will
the film music fans who have embraced his work, that Medal of Honor:
Frontline is the most well developed, mature score that Giacchino has
provided to the series yet.
Gone forever may be the bombast that accompanied the
gung-ho spirit of the first Medal of Honor game. Some listeners who
enjoyed Giacchino's obvious stylistic similarities to John Williams' music
of the 1980's will disappointed by this fact, but the transformation which
has taken Giacchino's style further from that enthusiastic start has also
led him down the path of creating his own style. Indeed, the title theme for
the Allies is back, as is the Nazi theme and an adaptation of a major
character theme, but they are not presented with the same heroic vigor
during most of Medal of Honor: Frontline. Only in the final mission
on the album, "The Horton's Nest," does a hint of that American patriotism
begin to shine once again. On the other hand, Medal of Honor:
Frontline isn't as subtle and understated as much of Medal of Honor:
Underground was, and when Giacchino does provide moments of suspense in
the newest score, he raises the bar by utilizing an adult chorus to
accentuate the horrors of war. The chorus also works to brighten the
beauties of war, with cues such as "After the Drop" and "Arnhem" offering
harmonious, though bittersweet passages that exceed the quality of
Giacchino's other music for the series. The score has a more powerful effect
on the listener, and yet, even in its magnificent consistency, it lacks the
enthusiastic grip that made the first Medal of Honor so enticing on
album. Thus, despite being a superior composition and recording, Medal of
Honor: Frontline is about equal to the original, and slightly better
than the previous entry. Recorded in a Seattle cathedral, this score has a
slightly more acoustically dynamic sound. Part of this is likely due to the
location, though Giacchino's use of the chorus, chimes, bells, and anvil
also add a welcomed depth. The album is not available through the same
limited online avenues as the previous two; it is only to be purchased
through EA Games' online gaming store. Luckily, it is still a popular seller
and is priced at an inexpensive $10. Beware of a hideous, drink-induced
hidden track at the end, however. Medal of Honor: Frontline confirms
what many have suspected since 1999: Giacchino is ready for a major motion
picture scoring assignment, and with such consistent quality in music, that
assignment can't be far from reality. ****
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Operation Market Garden (5:32)
Storm in the Port (11:34)
• 2. Border Town (3:36)
• 3. U-4902 (4:44)
• 4. Shipyards of Lorient (3:14)
Needle in a Haystack (16:37)
• 5. After the Drop (5:37)
• 6. Kleveburg (3:32)
• 7. Manor House Rally (3:48)
• 8. The Halftrack Chase (3:40)
Several Bridges Too Far (13:52)
• 9. Nijimegen Bridge (3:21)
• 10. The Rowhouses (4:40)
• 11. Arnhem (5:51)
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Rolling Thunder (9:48)
• 12. Emmerich Station (3:02)
• 13. Thuringer Wald Express (2:52)
• 14. Sturmgeist's Armored Train (3:54)
The Horton's Nest (14:32)
• 15. Approaching the Tarmac (3:47)
• 16. Clipping Their Wings (3:27)
• 17. Escaping Gotha (7:18)
• 18. The Songless Nightingale (2:46)
• 19. Hidden Track (4:29)
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The insert includes considerable information about the game and its music,
including a cue-by-cue description of the music.
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