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After their work on Soul, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were approached to take the sound of Tron: Ares in a new direction. The two ultimately served as executive producers for the film and had their own cameos as fighter pilots on screen. They were surprised when Disney asked them to take screen credit for their involvement as their band name, Nine Inch Nails, rather than their individual names as they had on every soundtrack since a 1996 video game last used the band name instead. While the studio will argue that it's appropriate for an industrial rock band to score an equally industrial film, let's face it: Disney did this for marketing reasons. They wanted to sell more albums, naturally. The end result of the music is less important and, in this case, that product is easily the least interesting and effective of any of the scores in the franchise. Atmospherically, the approach by Reznor and Ross is fine, but even they admit that the score was conceived as a hybrid electronic dance music album rather than a film score, and it plays as such. Whether you consider it an EDM product or industrial rock blend, what truly matters here is that the music has no sense of awe or importance and no fantasy element at all. It's more boring than offensive, which is the worst possible outcome. The technical element is certainly important, but there is drama and fantasy that gets lost in this music. To that end, there are really no moments of easy tonality in any cue, even the softest character portions disturbed to some degree with a hazy atmosphere in the background. The narrative connectivity is rather minimal in the score as well, with no true flow to the story in the music. Instrumentally, it's a completely synthetic work without even an obvious percussive presence. Not much emulation of orchestral sounds exists aside from the faux brass in "Building Better Worlds." Some of the more modern electronic sounds and distortions remind of Benjamin Wallfisch, especially in the angry and offensively harsh tones of "Target Identified" and "Daemonize." Distorted tones in the rhythms and melodies are a feature rather than a defect. The pulsing volume of these sounds is a maddening effect perhaps meant to emulate electricity.

Two cues by Wendy Carlos for the 1982 film, "Theme From Tron" and "Tron Scherzo," are tracked into this one, but Reznor and Ross took little from that inspiration. A few of their new sounds emulate Carlos' 1980's tones, along with a touch of Vangelis along the way, but there's not as much retro connection to the 1980's arcade sound as one might expect. The creativity factor isn't particularly high in the new sounds conjured, either, leaving the appeal of the soundtrack to its songs and the execution of its somewhat obtuse themes. The song usage is integrated throughout the score and performed by Reznor and Ross when original in "As Alive as You Need Me to Be," "I Know You Can Feel It," "Who Wants to Live Forever?," and "Shadow Over Me." While the last of those utilizes the score's main theme (or vice versa, the score tracks serving like instrumental renditions of the song), the songs generally don't connect with the score enough, a tremendous missed opportunity. (Several non-Nine Inch Nails songs are tossed into the narrative as well, including a Depeche Mode song.) In the underscore portions of the album that surround the original songs, there are recurring themes by Reznor and Ross, but don't expect to remember any of them. Their performances also fail to stir any memorable passages because of their rather one-dimensional attitude as well, so some casual film music collectors may not even notice that they exist. That issue especially plagues the score's frequently accessed and manipulated theme for Ares and identities in general. This existential representation most frequently uses three-note phrases with shifting harmonics underneath, guiding the meandering, passionless, and cold, piano-like tones in "Echoes" without really drawing attention to itself as a cohesive theme. That idea is shifted to a different demeanor during the pulsing "In the Image Of" and mutated and abbreviated to two-note sequences in the badly distorted "Permanence." Highly manipulated on grating keyboards in "100% Expendable," this idea never evolves as one would expect for Ares; it just repeats over and over again with different tones. This theme shifts its progressions in the wayward, dreamy "No Going Back" and almost finds new footing and identity in "Out in the World," but it never achieves any real catharsis or satisfaction.

The actual main theme of the score for Tron: Ares, as extended out of the unlikable "Shadow Over Me" song, is a repeating descending phrase with no secondary development. Although the primary line is long enough to function in fragments as needed, there's never any good answer to its full initial phrase. Heard immediately and throughout "Init" in endless repetition on various keyboarded tones, this theme is stated in only the second half of its progression in the middle of "Infiltrator" and later elongated and romanticized on piano-like sensitivity in "Still Remains." After a stoic presence throughout "Building Better Worlds" on a synthy emulation of brass or pipe organ, the main theme stews in the middle of "What Have You Done?" without much clarity, forms a cyclical undercurrent in "A Question of Trust," and becomes faint in the higher ranges early in "Nemesis." Later in the story, the theme finally reconstitutes itself in the middle of "New Directive" for a reprise of "Init," and some listeners may find merit in the instrumental portions of the otherwise atrocious "Shadow Over Me" song. Most of the other fleeting melodic wandering in Tron: Ares is somehow related to one of these two themes, but there is seemingly a distinct secondary theme of hope carried by an ascending keyboard line in "Empathetic Response" against really challenging dissonant noise. This material consolidates again in "Ghost in the Machine," perhaps suggesting it as a connection to the franchise's past. In the end, though, some have postulated that the movie failed because it lost the human connection that drove the first two movies, and that loss is the exact problem with the score by Reznor and Ross. Most film music collectors will be aggravated by the sheer abrasive personality of the work, the rough edges of its synthetics an intentional jab at the sinister and mysterious and occasionally exciting side of the story. When listeners start gauging scores by the quantity of music they can marginally tolerate, you know your fantasy realm has gone astray. Those who appreciated the symphonic escalation in Tron: Legacy will be horrified by this sequel's rejection of that sound, but the bigger problem is that the Tron: Ares soundtrack isn't as much obnoxious as it is irrelevant. A concept such as this begs for memorable music regardless of the approach, and the composers failed at that basic task.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 66:49