Three composers, two soundtracks, one feeling

It has now been a good 14 years since publisher THQ launched Company of Heroes from developer Relic Entertainment. And this game still haunts me to this day. Firstly, because it is one of the best, if not the best, real-time strategy game I have ever played. In my opinion, what it lacks in terms of strategic depth and game mechanics compared to other big brands - one of the reasons why I never played it online - it makes up for with its dense atmosphere.

Hardly any other strategy game I have played has been able to depict battles so intimately, so realistically. Every clash of units is full of tension. Where in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars we can send our infantry squads into machine-gun fire without a care in the world, or in Supreme Commander literally throwing troops at the enemy non-stop, Company of Heroes forces us into the micro level by demanding clever tactics: Which is the best place to attack, which position is strategically important and provides enough cover for my squads and tanks? How do I use the scarce resources? Which unit is missing from my forces?

Games from the Company of Heroes-series

Company of Heroes (2006)

Company of Heroes 2 (2013)

This feeling of being right in the thick of it is also supported by the fantastic sound design. Tank shots sound convincingly powerful, the great voice acting (at least in English) really brings out the radio messages of our boys - at a distance even with connection noise. And when the enemy machine gun fires volley after volley into the field, it's easy to understand why our lads ignore the marching orders and prefer to use their faces to explore the mud below instead. The World War II boom is supported by a beautiful soundtrack, which - and this brings us full circle - I still enjoy listening to today.

The OST for Company of Heroes was released in two albums: Songs from the Front with 36 tracks, which is a bit more up my alley thanks to its action-packed nature, and All Heroes Rise with 25. But because both belong to the same game and no songs appear twice, I'm treating both scores in this review as one coherent OST - purists may forgive me. Well, now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to the originators.

Composerwise three heavyweights have joined forces for this score: Ian Livingstone, Inon Zur and Jeremy Soule. The names should be familiar to visitors of this blog, as at least two of them are real experts in my eyes. For an objectively subjective evaluation, I have calculated the average track ratings of the artists for fun. According to this, Zur (10 tracks) and Soule (26 tracks) each have an average rating of 2.5 stars, while Livingstone (25 tracks) really comes out on top with an average of 3.92 stars. But numbers alone say nothing without justification. So now we come to the actual review.

A quick reminder: we are in the Second World War as we play a large part of the campaign on the side of the Allies, predominantly the Americans. So it is hardly surprising that the musical connection to films and series such as Saving Privat Ryan or Band of Brothers becomes apparent from the very first track. Track 1, Sunrise on the Battlefield by Soule, initially brings back memories of his brother Julian Soule's work for Star Trek: New Worlds. A combination of strings and brass create a form of grounding, the mental image of a morning landscape is formed. After just under half a minute, we rise above the action in the best Elder Scrolls-manner with brighter sounds, look out into the vastness and the story can begin.

Let's stick with Soule at this point. His recognizable style and the associated similarity to other scores can often be found in this OST. Time and again, it feels as if you are listening to something familiar with a world war twist. Ruthless Tactic with its marching rhythms resembles Supreme Commander, gleicht Supreme Commander, Clash of Swords and Skirmish in the Woods The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That can be irritating, though I like it. Apart from that, there's unfortunately only a lot of ambient stuff that works ingame, but not beyond that. As if in reconciliation, he also contributes the acoustic highlight of the score with the nameless track Untitled.

While researching for this review, I came across the soundtrack website VGMO which also writes reviews. Fortunately, my assessment of this coincides with Emily McMillan's, which is why I'll leave the technical description to her at this point:

Soule closes this soundtrack [Songs from the Front] with the imaginatively-named Untitled , which follows much like the opening — bright, complex, and emotional. It opens with a string pattern that ultimately develops into a countermelody, played under a horn that enters shortly and introduces a beautiful theme that ebbs and flows as the piece continues, undergoing both development and variations until it finally reaches its strongest point with the entrance of a choral setting of the melody.

Emily McMillan über Untitled

If you want, you can also read the rest of the article, which is very well written and goes into a bit more detail, even if I don't quite agree with the conclusion.

After Soule, let's move on to Inon Zur, who, with a meagre 10 tracks, makes the smallest contribution to the listening pleasure and doesn't score much in terms of points. Here we hear mostly familiar sounds, some of which sound like Fallout, others like Dragon Age or Baldur’s Gate. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the short durations, sometimes less than a minute, mean that there is little time to develop the motifs. This makes his compositions feel more like filler than real content. This is also one of my biggest criticisms, on which I agree with McMillan: In general, the pieces are far too short. With a total duration of one and three quarters of an hour, the 61 tracks result in an average song duration of just under 1.5 minutes. Considering that a third of them are just ambient tracks for background noise, a lot of potential has been squandered.

And last but not least, Ian Livingstone, who produced the other top tracks on the OST alongside Untitled by Soule, proves that the potential is definetly present. A total of 7 tracks get full marks from me, above all the fantastic The Month of Valiant Effort, which, with its opening violins, leaves little time for reflection - action is what's called for. Percussion follows and the march begins. Accompanied by the winds, a melody develops that drives the listener forward before the entire orchestra plays at 0:45 and announces epic and heroic efforts - hence the name. A fantastic theme, of which I would have liked more on the 61-track album.

Just like of On Guard for Liberty,, which also seems to shout "For king and country"! What is particularly nice here is that the leitmotif of Livingstone's compositions comes to the fore around the one minute mark, linking these tracks. We hear it again on the stately-sounding King and Country (min 1:08), the overture to the wonderful A Company of Heroes from min 0:27, which only just falls short of Untitled , and the plaintive but no less heroic To Those Who Rest (min 0:37).

The apparent lack of cooperation between the three artists is unfortunate and reminds me of the music for the Harry Potter-series, where each new composer moved further and further away from John Williams' familiar motifs until the films ended up resembling any random teen flick. Livingstone's dominant theme is great, and rediscovering it in his tracks is fun. In contrast, Soule's and Zur's disjointed pieces sound almost old-fashioned and well-worn. Fresh ideas like March of the Black Boots , on the other hand, set accents even within the rather uniform World War II military tropes and even seemingly boring gap fillers like Waiting for the Drop can be exciting.

What remains is a hodgepodge of action-packed and contemplative tracks in world war guise, a comparatively large amount of boring ambient music and three composers who have not found one another. The soundtrack as a whole does work, but could have been so much better considering its potential. If I were to be cynical, I could almost say that the soundtrack was created by Livingstone alone - but that's not me. Yet I do like the album as a whole and still enjoy listening to it today because it's nevertheless quite well done.