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•	2011 Album

•	2002 Album

•	2018 Album

•	2017 Album

•	2011 Album

Otherwise, Kamen's score is defined by a series of repeated, pseudo- Western and pseudo-oriental riffs on acoustic guitar and lightly jingling bells representing the holidays (again in humorous mode). The Western riffs occupy much of the cat and mouse game played in the first half of the movie, fulfilling McClane's cowboy mould. The striking, percussion-led action explosion heard in "The Fight" (or "Tony and John Fight" in later cue attribution) was tracked several times into the remainder of the score, becoming the de facto motif of hand-to-hand combat. The remainder of the score consists of blurts from the lowest registers of the ensemble, lengthy sequences with the plucking of strings, vague jingling holiday rhythms, and themeless progressions that occasionally strike some intriguing notes (as in "Going After John Again") but are otherwise anonymous. As McClane eludes his would-be killers and conducts his attempts to contact the police, the score follows the same low-key path that it did when the terrorists first secured the building. A very wet mix to some of the twangy electric guitar and low string plucking in these sequences causes a sense of ambience adequate for the unfinished portions of the Nakatomi Plaza, also alluding to the nightmarish nature of the hostage situation. These techniques are a marginally sufficient representation of the Plaza and the hide and seek game within, but the score does finally kick it into a higher gear for its two most violent scenes of confrontation and the story's set action pieces on a larger scale. In the "Under the Table" and the (artificially tracked) "Gruber's Departure" sequences, Kamen explores a Barnard Herrmann-like rhythmic series of brass exclamations that eventually increase in pace as they reach the climaxes of their scenes. These brass blasts unleashed as Gruber falls to his death in slow motion, despite the fact that Kamen did not originally intend for this motif to be used in this circumstance, yield perhaps the score's single most memorable moment. The immense, discordant force of these performances is so disparate from the remainder of the score's material that they truly are easily recognizable highlights. For the film's two major explosion sequences, atop the building and below as SWAT forces encroach, Kamen provided relentless snare rhythms that were in part dialed out of the film. As recorded, "The Battle" (a.k.a. "Assault on the Tower") is another ball-busting passage worthy of an appearance on compilations. The snare applications in this cue are particularly notable, as is a determined low brass motif of defiance for the terrorists' rebuttals of the thrust.

Ultimately, however, Die Hard is a score best appreciated in its highly rearranged form in context, because the lengthy series of suspense cues early in its running time, regardless of their effectiveness, is frightfully generic despite containing some intelligently subdued design by the composer. His music for McClane's relationship with his estranged wife is so muted that most of it was dialed out in the picture. With this final set of points in mind, Kamen's music for Die Hard doesn't translate well onto album unless you appreciate the product as a pure souvenir of the unusual holiday ambience and character quirks in the story. Only once the party really begins, and the Plaza is under siege by the ineffectual police and FBI force, does Kamen's score begin to hold its own. Even during the climax of the film, as the vault of the Plaza is opened by the terrorists, Kamen's original music continues to take a back seat to his own victorious re-recordings of "Ode to Joy." The same applies to the score's revisitation of that mode in its end credits. There is no actual, original resolution music recorded by Kamen for the movie, either, almost everything after the Gruber death scene tracked in from other sources. The John Scott romance music is humorously out of place and therefore somewhat works as a ridiculous coda to the plot, but the Horner insertion is so awkwardly tracked that even a mainstream listener could tell that something is awry. For film music enthusiasts, it may be really cool to hear Horner's trademark 1980's chord progressions in glorious victory as the camera shifts focus from officer Al Powell's gun to his face, but there can be no doubt that the shift in musical tone is jarring. Overall, the weak early and middle portions of the Die Hard score function to basic degrees in the film, sometimes as mere sound effects, and the movie might have succeeded just as well with outright parody adaptations of Christmas carols. Even Kamen's somewhat creative Western-styled identity conjured to represent the "Roy" alter-ego of McClane is understated. The score's major action cues will be redemptive for many listeners, however. This assault material saves the whole from mediocrity, providing fifteen minutes of very strong, orchestrally dynamic and engaging music both in film and on album. The lack of a more clearly defined and developed theme for McClane restrains the score, however, though honestly, even if Kamen had written such evolving material into his score, the rearrangement of his recordings in the editing process probably would have nullified the gain. For some viewers, the "Ode to Joy" usage is so identifiable with the terrorists that McClane, musically speaking, is inherently subordinate.

Kamen's work for Die Hard was finally released on a legitimate CD album in 2002 as part of the Varèse Sarabande Club, with only 3,000 copies available and eventually selling for hundreds of dollars once out of print. The 77-minute presentation unfortunately substitutes the song at the end for a disparate instrumental version of "Let It Snow." In 2011, La-La Land Records provided an even fuller presentation of Die Hard, assembling all of the score (and a fair amount of the source material) from the best available sources for a 3,500-copy pressing that also sold out quickly. The same labeled re-issued 2,000 copies of the identical music with new art in 2017. While the first two La-La Land products don't add a substantial amount of Kamen's original music, they did collect all of the recordings, some in mono sound where necessary, in a better presentation and include some alternate and bonus tracks at the end. What listeners may forget is that the available master tapes for these Die Hard albums were never very clear to begin with, and some of them were simply missing (including the notable "Fire Hose" cue). The sound quality was muffled at best and nearly unlistenable at worst. So poor was the soundscape that not even a good remastering could give this recording a sense of life, and that important aspect of all the official albums should serve as another warning flag to casual listeners. Shortly after La-La Land's 2017 re-issue, however, newly discovered masters yielded a much superior album presentation for a 30th anniversary, 3-CD set in 2018, and this product finally provides the Die Hard album experience fans deserved. At 5,000 copies, this product solves many of the score's ills, and the album painstakingly assembles both the recording as Kamen intended and careful recreations of what was heard in the film, including remixes of material to separate orchestral and synthetic elements as was done during post-production. An alternate take on "The Battle" is particularly interesting, especially with its tearing, metallic percussion. Some of the source recordings by Kamen that mutilate Beethoven and Roy Rogers tunes, among others, are truly hilarious, including his own vocalizations for one of them. The fantastic-sounding 2018 set is infinitely superior to all the previous albums, and while the labels both did excellent jobs of working with the what was available prior and providing Kamen's work as well as possible at the time, all those products should be ignored. The soundtrack for Die Hard remains overrated, though, if only because its inspirations and final editing are naggingly disqualifying, and the 2018 set only confirms that this music is a wild ride worthy of study but challenging to appreciate for standalone enjoyment.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written for the Film:  ***
• Music as Heard on the 2002, 2011, and 2017 Albums:  ***
• Music as Heard on the 2018 Album:  ****
• Overall:  ***

Bias Check:

For Michael Kamen reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 15 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23 (in 34,672 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.