Year: 2009
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST)
Composer(s): Sascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco, Jesper Kyd, Raison Varner
Number of tracks: 27

★★★★★

Serious beginings

This is the music review of
Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot (2010).

When I wrote the review for Borderlands 2 good four and a half years ago, I did so partly because the soundtrack was pretty good at times and I wanted to offer you guys something interesting (I'm still doing that today, by the way, just a tit more sophisticated). But my main motivation was that I needed a game that started with the letter B. A b-ad decision that would be reprised in games like Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Walking Dead: Season 3 – A New Frontier.

Fortunately, I've matured a bit since then and I've realized that it makes sense to start at the beginning of a series - apart from reboots, of course. The reason is simple, after all, it's the only way to better understand the musical development of a series or a composer. After all, who would have thought, for example, that the theme from Gothic 3 already appeared in the first Gothic ? Certainly not me, an illiterate naïf! It's annoying for me, of course, since by doing so I sometimes have to slog through real snoozes and dust collectors to get to the good stuff, but as I said above: I'm doing it for you!

Borderlands (2009)

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (2010)

Borderlands 2 (2012)

Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty (2012)

Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage (2013)

Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt (2014)

Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep (2014)

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – Digistruct Peak Challenge (2013)

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – TK Baha’s Bloody Harvest (2013)

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – The Horrible Hunger of the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day (2013)

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – Mad Moxxi and the Wedding Day Massacre (2014)

Borderlands 2: Headhunter Pack – Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax (2014)

Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary (2019)

So my catch-up tour starts with Gearbox's 2009 Lootshooter, whose soundtrack was created by Sascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco, Jesper Kyd and Raison Varner, who worked on Borderlands 2 and partly also Borderlands 3 . Thankfully, there is in fact an actual OST: a curated, 27-track album, complete with artist attribution and labeling - love it!

On the other hand, I only find its content 'okay'. The reason: it's a little too unexciting in parts. What would have been an absurd analysis at the time in view of the completely exaggerated game world and gameplay, I feel is entirely justified in view of the further development of the Borderlands-series. The first Borderlands was not yet the brightly colored techno-dubstep shooter orgy we know today. Borderlands 1 was even classified as an 'action role-playing first-person shooter' in the Wikipedia entry. Role-playing game!

No, Gearbox was still a long way from what the later games would become. And so the soundtrack also reflects more Rage rather than Castle Crashers. The score is more sedate, less playful. Of course, at its core it's still an action shooter that doesn't want to tell a rousing story, but rather offers us more and more weapons to make pew pew. But Traveling to the Vault, which is almost reminiscent of Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Alien, with its spherical sounds and distant vocals, just seems so much more serious than what the sequels offer us.

At the same time, ambient pieces such as Welcome to Fyrestone, Enter Skags Gully, Traversing the Deep and Assaulting Krom’s Canyon (dessen Titel Gegenteiliges vermuten lässt) zurückhaltend und entsprechend wenig spektakulär. Sie umreißen eine westernartige Spielwelt und machen Pandora zu einem Abziehbild klassischer Filmtropen  – eben das, was man bei einem Shooter-Score erwarten würde.

Nevertheless, traces of the different styles of the various artists are visible. While tracks such as Smoking Out the Bunker and Burning Rubber and Shooting Bullets by the duo Dikiciyan and Valesco exude pleasant Dark Messiah-vibes, Jesper Kyd takes a familiar guitar approach with Prelude and Welcome to Fyrestone , which brings back memories of the first Assassin’s Creed , not least because of the similar instrumentation.

What I absolutely cannot understand, however, is that the song Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant was not included. It plays during the very stylish intro and fits the game so well that, for me, it is synonymous with the score. It may be for licensing reasons, it may have been a stylistic decision, whatever. The song is great and is missing here. Period. 

To bring this review to a conclusion: The score of Borderlands is unexpectedly serious, sometimes even dark ... at least compared to its successors. With a glance at other shooter colleagues, we still have a firework display of action, with songs like Burning Rubber and Shooting Bullets already showing the direction the series would take. Would I recommend it? Mhhh well no, at most for the top-rated action tracks. And the intro song!

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Prelude	Jesper Kyd	4
02	Welcome to Fyrestone	Jesper Kyd	2
03	Enter Skag Gully	Raison Varner	2
04	Fighting off the Skags	Raison Varner	3
05	Removing the Bandit Threat	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	3
06	Traversing the Deep	Raison Varner	1
07	Fighting Sledge's Minions	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	4
08	Welcome to the Bunker	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	2
09	Smoking Out the Bunker	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	4
10	Burning Rubber and Shooting Bullets	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	5
11	The Junkyard Vista	Jesper Kyd	2
12	Welcome to the Trash Coast	Raison Varner	1
13	The Rakkhive Emerges	Raison Varner	3
14	Assaulting Krom's Canyon	Raison Varner	2
15	Battling Krom's Minions	Raison Varner	3
16	Fighting Krom and His Gun	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	4
17	Trash the Bandits	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	4
18	Trash the Bandits Some More	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	3
19	Welcome to the Wastelands	Jesper Kyd	1
20	Traveling to the Vault	Raison Varner	4
21	Destroying the Destroyer	Raison Varner	4
22	Bring Your Guns [Bonus]	Jesper Kyd	3
23	Borderlands [Bonus]	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	3
24	The Old New Haven [Bonus]	Tim Larkin	3
25	Exploring the Mine [Bonus]	Tim Larkin	3
26	Exploring the Overlook [Bonus]	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	2
27	The Threat at Overlook [Bonus]	Sascha Dikiciyan; Chris Valesco	3

Year: 2010
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST)
Composer(s): Raison Varner
Number of tracks: 3

★★★★★

Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot

Let's keep it short: The three tracks Welcome to the Arena Suckers, Moxxi Wants Your Blood and Bring Out the Badasses with their techno beats are basically what we will later primarily hear in Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 . Raison Varner presents us with a few dub-steppy action tracks to match the arena brawl topic of the DLC, reminiscent of games like River City Girls with their repetitive character and minimal retro touch. You can like that, but it's a bit too trivial for me here.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Welcome to the Arena Suckers	Raison Varner	3
02	Moxxi Wants Your Blood	Raison Varner	2
03	Bring Out the Badasses	Raison Varner	2