4 out of 5

Label: Back Lot Music

Produced by: Ramin Djawadi

With having nabbed the spot making the themes and tunes for high profile HBO productions Game of Thrones and Westworld, one might think that Ramin Djawadi would’ve left his I’ll-score-anything approach behind, now sitting with a consistent paycheck.  This seemingly inexhaustible source of compositional zest saw Ramin working on action fests like Clash of the Titans while still knocking out more minimalist pieces like Mr. Brooks or doing the ol’ reliably-head-bobby-but-still-ignorable shtick on shows like Person of Interest and Prison Break, which, don’t knock it, is a skill set required for most TV.  Not everything was a standout, but the majority of his work had value to some degree, regardless of his personal motivations (which I can only guess at, of course), and being a fan, its been pretty cool to turn around and see something else bearing his name like every month.  Still, GOT was a nice nab, and I expected Djawadi’s output to maybe slowdown or shift with that as his focus.

Ah, but my boy kept on churning out other tunes the whole while.  And while Warcraft may not have been a big leap from the fantasy of Game of Thrones, its status as an also-rans actioner meant Ramin hadn’t left his more experimental side behind.  So I expected similar earthy instrumentation and the driving beats of GOT; I did not expect Warcraft to end up being one of Ramin’s best scores.

Having no history with the games, while I definitely enjoyed the film, I could see it was crowded in trying to set up a history and its character set; I had no in-built affection for the universe, and so I was left to be endeared by what I saw and heard.  While director Duncan Jones did quite an admirable job with such boisterous material, I felt – as I did with Letterier’s Clash of the Titans – my attentions were certainly encouraged by the freshness of the music, which in both cases caught my ear without knowing who was making the tunes.  The scores take familiar enough themes and rocket them through Ramin’s modernized-Zimmer zeal, fleshed out with a bettered appreciation for patience and mystery when hefty scenes required a sense of build.  (Zimmer is more of the old school score-the-cues approach, in my book; great themes, average scores.)

Even more apparent when hearing this stuff on its own is how capable it is of conjuring the urge to fight or to trigger a sense of awe.  Specific to Warcraft, it also amusingly syncs with how the film’s imagery may have inspired Ramin: the most memorable moments are the amazing opening and the character-dedicated pieces, with some further spotlights on those moments that were exclusively of the Warcraft world and not just generic D and D dragons.  Meanwhile, tracks with bland titles like The Beginning or The Book are sorta just that: bland filler music that would work for any score with a track with that name.  These moments hinder the score from hanging together as a front-to-back listen; the connective tissue is too apparent; again, frankly, as it was in the movie, trying to bridge giant disparate chunks of plot to one another.  Out of 19 tracks, though, there’s actual very little of such material, keeping the Warcraft listening experience a concise, thematic, and very effective listen that can sit alongside composer Ramin Djawadi’s bests.