Buy it... if the maturity of Michael Giacchino's own distinct style is what you had considered lacking in the previous "Medal of Honor" scores.

Avoid it... if you really have no confidence in the quality of any score for a video game, because by this entry in the series, Giacchino's "Medal of Honor" music could compete favorably with any major film score.

Giacchino

Medal of Honor: Frontline: (Michael Giacchino) By the time "Medal of Honor: Frontline" hit the gaming market in 2002, the "Medal of Honor" concept had strongly established itself as a premiere war game in the industry since 1999. With its origins resting with Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg, the series of games firmly extended the expectation that large orchestral music was not only an expected feature of these historical war games, but also expanding into a variety of other genres as well. After being recognized and awarded for his work on "Medal of Honor: Underground" the previous year, composer 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 requiring five new cues of material (and thus received no major album release), Giacchino was on the verge of leaving this era of his career behind, moving on to the show "Alias" and, within a few years, feature film scores that would yield an Academy Award nomination. "Medal of Honor: Frontline," in the meantime, thrust 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 third installment. By the end of the successful scoring and recording endeavor, however, the composer had written and recorded nearly 75 minutes of material. Giacchino decided not to significantly alter the foundation of 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 (Lt. Patterson) would be restructured in an effort, as Giacchino would call it, to represent how the character had matured in the time that had passed since the battles and adventures of the first game. Not surprisingly, this growth of that character's theme mirrors the maturation of Giacchino's own work for the entire series as well.

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Enthusiasts of the video game series recognized, as did the film music fans who had already embraced his work, that "Medal of Honor: Frontline" is the most well developed, mature score that Giacchino had provided to the series yet. Gone forever was the optimistic bombast that accompanied the gung-ho spirit of the first "Medal of Honor" score. Some listeners who enjoyed Giacchino's obvious stylistic similarities to John Williams' music of the 1980's were disappointed by this fact, but the transformation which had taken Giacchino's style further from that enthusiastic start also led him down the necessary path to creating his own style. Indeed, the title theme for the Allies is back, as is the Nazi theme and an adaptation of the 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 ballsy 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 this score, he raises the bar by utilizing a varied chorus to accentuate the horrors of the situation. The chorus also works to brighten the beauties of location (especially in a solo boy's tone), 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. This 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" score so enticing on album. Thus, despite being a superior composition and recording, "Medal of Honor: Frontline" is about equal to the original in terms of album enjoyment, and slightly better than the previous entry. Recorded in a Seattle cathedral, the 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 welcomed depth. The album was not available through the same limited online venues as the previous two; it was only to be purchased through EA Games' online gaming store (and luckily, it was a popular seller and therefore priced at an inexpensive $10). Beware of a hideous, drink-induced, hidden source track at the end, however. Overall, "Medal of Honor: Frontline" confirmed what many had suspected since 1999: Giacchino was ready for the major motion picture scoring assignments soon to come. ****

Bias Check:

For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.6 (in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.39 (in 6,229 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.