3 out of 5

Label: New Line

Producer: RZA, various

Twelve tracks, two of which are Ramin Djawadi’s score, half of the remainder belonging to RZA (writing, production, or overseen Wu contributions), the other half some techno / dance workouts.  Twelve tracks, two interesting but stunted Djawadi contributions, half of the remaining awesome, slick and tightly wound Wu-Tang tracks, the other remaining half pretty typical and tiresome.

The whole first half of the disc has a sick sense of momentum and aggression, and whether or not these tracks were penned exclusively for the flick (some must’ve been, and the ones that not must’ve been seem like it), the lyrical and musical themes carry through, lending the soundtrack, initially, a sense of thought and cohesion that the film sorta maybe lacked.  The production is also outta site, with amazingly thick beats layered and layered with strings and keys samples, incredibly hooky, incredibly groovy, all without falling into any kind of specific rap-rock or radio-rap trope.  RZA’s work here is very inventive, and makes the ties to the Blade world feel legit (like he’s a fan) and not just star-power guesting to net some extrey dollars.  The lyrics are what they are, but there’s creative and catchy rhyming that’s not repetitive and, again, sticks with the flick’s themes.

Track five is a Djawadi / RZA collabo.  There are some snippets that RZA wends into his track and others that’s re-used here, otherwise you can here Djawadi’s modernization of the Zimmer build-up, with his technology embracing usage of drumbeats.  It makes for a good theme, but it would’ve been nice to hear this unleashed for a whole album; here it just feels like a snippet.

Then onto some more dance-based stuff.  It works well enough – Black Lab does a light IDM workout and The Crystal Method give us some 90s techno-yelly stuff that’s probably what you’d expect most of this soundtrack to be like, but the Paris, Texas remix and Manchild track are both mostly a snooze of beats and minutes ticking by.

We wrap up with another Djawadi track, which brings back the theme and, confusingly, seems like a medley of three different parts of the film, the score dropping to nothing then coming back up for a completely different tune.  But it’s all one track, four minutes, so I’m not sure how that works.  Each piece individually is pretty great, and the last two are these really brooding beat things, but again, really feels like snippets so it’s hard to understand their place.

A nice surprise – a fairly respectable, totally listenable batch of music from what was a pretty lame movie.  (And the way the soundtrack is used in the flick also makes you assume it ain’t gonna be as enjoyable as it is.)