4 out of 5

Label: WaterTower Music

Produced by: Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL

Mad Max: Fury Road was essentially non-stop visual madness, but that doesn’t mean that George Miller didn’t construct it without an appreciation for breathers, or ebbing and flowing that madness to keep us just on the verge of exhaustion for its runtime.  And being very much a visual movie – Miller’s film goal with the Max series (or at least Road Warrior and Fury Road) has been stated as wanting to make something that can ‘read’ as a silent film – the accompanying, thrashing score was a big part of not only keeping our emotions in-line with the action, but also weaving in and out diagetically with the War Boys’ pounding instruments during their attacks.  I began hunting for the soundtrack to Fury Road as soon as the first trailer hit: in a post-Hans Zimmer ‘Inception’ score world, every movie was doing the big BLAST effect in some way or another, and the clip for FR had somehow finally broken that trend without falling back on staid distorted guitar riffs or the general stock ruff and tuff music we use for action movies.  That early proof of visual and aural flair was – and thankfully I wasn’t let down – confirmation of how perfectly constructed this project would end up being.

The flick in its entirety certainly made use of the propulsive theme featured in that trailer, stripped down to tribal beats and built up to massive horn / string / percussive moments.  And while my memory isn’t keen enough to say how much of his hour plus soundtrack actually appears in the flick, the sequencing is nonetheless spot on, easing us in with ‘Survive’ before a wash of distortion kicks of the pummeling ‘Escape.’  Fury Road’s most impressive tracks are also its longest, as Holkenborg has ample space to move us through the range of his attacks, but the whole score works together for a relative ebb and flow, push and pull.  Perhaps owing to Holkenborg’s electronic roots, the sound does lack a certain organicness to it, despite it seemingly being majorly orchestral; this is a fair match for the steam-punky vibe of the flick, but during the quieter moments, it rounds off the edges of the sound, making it a bit too generic.  We thrive on the pulse-pounding sections, which, yeah, take a good part of the score.

Basically: if you like soundtracks and you liked the film, I don’t think there’s any grey area in saying you’ll like what Junkie XL did here, and be able to appreciate how the score’s momentum was an absolutely integral part of the film experience…  And a dangerous listen when you’re not confined to a theater seat, since it makes you want to get up and start thrashing around the room.