ARRRRRRRRR!!!!! I first listened to this score on the film, and it worked superbly...my album listen only furthered my enjoyment. Hoist the Colours proved that Zimmer can still write addicting engaging themes, even if they do fall into the "power anthem" category. It proved to be rousing and the end credits version (the one that isn't on the album) is grand. The new love theme for Elizabeth and Will is sweeping and gorgeous. The criticism that the theme has too much "power" is unfounded...the shot of Elizabeth and Will kissing aboard the black pearl coupled with the theme is the perfect overdone romantic moment for the pirates trilogy. Yes, it doesn't go through enough variations, but it shows up enough on the (regretably) short album to make it worthwhile. The new main theme (IT'S NOT ANOTHER LOVE THEME!) is actually quite good and can be manipulated into a bunch of settings, as seen with the oboe solo in "I See Dead People on Boats" and the guitar riffs in "Parlay". Yet when it's rousing, it's at it's best...the rendition in "Drink Up Me Hearties" is the kind of swashbuckling music some people (like Christian) have been clamoring for the whole time, which makes me wonder why the star rating is so low.

The other new themes work pretty well too. The end of the world theme (the rising brass theme that first gets unleashed at 3:11 in "At Wit's End) is good, but it's a theme that doesn't allow for much variation outside of taking the string part out at some points. The loss of love theme (the four-note descending theme normally for strings) falls into the same category...it's nice, but don't expect much variation off something inherently simple. The three note falling theme at the end of "At Wit's End" and "Up is Down" adds some power to the ships falling.

One also has to note, as the review does on this page, that Hans does do a pretty good job of integrating the old themes. The two Jack Sparrow themes get their grand treatments. "Multiple Jacks" gives the cello theme from Dead Man's Chest a more trippy edge, something that seems immensely inappropriate without context but works well in the surrealist atmosphere of Davy Jones's Locker. Davy Jones theme itself gets its big choral moment as well as the quiet music box moments, and the theme works a little bit better this time around as it is not hammered away like in the Davy Jones cue from Pirates 2. One of the most intelligent variations Hans does is in "I Don't Think Now is the Best Time", where the Davy Jones theme roars out near the beginning of the cue. However, the way the theme is played is different enough to make it sound like the original theme from the first film, which is appropriate considering at that moment, you don't know what side the Dutchman is on. And the He's a Pirate theme recieves a fully orchestral and fully awesome rendition about 7 minutes into I Don't Think Now is the Best Time...it's some of the best and most rousing action material Hans has written in a while.

This is a 5-star review, right? Wrong, for there's a few problems that Christian did nail here. First, Hans's orchestration, despite significantly expanding (I really like "Up is Down"), is still limited and has its pitfalls in many areas. His power anthem bass-driven style drowns out the finer points of the music. A perfect example of this is in Singapore, where a moving, Middle Eastern sounding string line comes in right before the original Jack Sparrow theme belts out with full brass and choir. The problem is that the cue is mixed in such a way that the string line becomes drowned out and almost useless at that point. Despite the fact that Hans can write engaging music, no one is better at making an orchestra sound smaller than it actually is. This power anthem style does take over some of the cues..."What Shall We Die For?" for Hoist the Colours and "One Day" for the original Pirates theme, the latter to the point that it is almost indecipherable from other Zimmer themes.

Zimmer also uses his old scores as fallbacks once again...you wish the instrumental creativity in some of the score could play throughout all of it. The moving string line from King Arthur is blatantly thrown into the beginning of "One Day", some of the chorus still echoes of King Arthur, and I'm sure the DaVinci code criticisms are somewhat true, though I've stopped listening to that bland score so I won't know the difference.

Despite those two criticisms, this is easily the best Pirates score yet, and Zimmer's best since King Arthur (it's a little better in my opinion). Thank god the Dead Man's Chest electric guitar mixings that made some cues just plain unbearable in a film music setting have vanished, save the Morricone tribute in Parlay that is actually pretty cool in the film. Hopefully Zimmer can use this as a jumping off point to make future works sound fuller and be much better as a result. High end of the 4-star rating from me.