3 out of 5

Label: Adrenaline Records

Producer: David Sardy

I was so super excited when I saw that Sardy had been putting out some new material via soundtrack work.  Alas, he’s yet to really wow me with any of his pieces, as he seems to work in the “short and sweet” market of scores, not really writing full tunes but just scoring the snippets he’s supposed to.  It makes it difficult to stand by the scores as anything more than collector’s albums.  His sense of composition is there, and his production skills are, naturally, in step to give the work that live big-beat sound of his I dig, but on most tracks, as soon as he gets any motivation going – which is often – the track will fade out.  What is super interesting here that’s not so evident on his Zombieland or Ghost Rider scores is the experimentation with styles – some of these are softer, lullaby style, some are actually electronica… Sardy has worked with a pretty wide range of bands outside his normal fallback of rock, so it’s cool to see him work with some of that variation.

Still, I would think this would be a collector’s only deal, as I don’t think it works well as a standalone album.  It gets 3 from me, valued as part of Sardy’s musical history, but a casual listener probably won’t have any reason to pay attention.