Details:
- Film: 300
- Soundtrack composer: Tyler Bates
- Original year of release: 2007
- Number of tracks: 25
- Soundtrack duration: 59 mins 56 secs
- Tracks with vocals/distracting aspects: None
- Film score duration (with distracting tracks removed): 59 mins 56 secs
- Suggested suitable book genres: War books, adrenaline-fuelled horrors & thrillers, action-rich plots, post-apocalyptic fiction, dark westerns, historical horrors & thrillers, fucking everything with some balls behind it!
DLS Summary:
I’ll start out by declaring that this soundtrack in my opinion is as close to perfect as I believe you can likely get. It’s an incredibly audio journey of intensity interspersed with serene beauty. Music which delivers the very essence of devotion, honour, strength, anger, horror and despair. Where some tracks are utterly intoxicating, others are colossal beasts of dominance, pounding onwards, flooding your veins with adrenaline.
Honestly, this soundtrack is just so insanely fucking good. The sheer variance of emotion displayed across this musical landscape is breathtaking. It’s incredible just to sit back and listen to it, or indeed to read with this in the background.
And coming onto reading, despite the dominance and strength of so many of the tracks, you absolutely can read with this soundtrack. In fact, it’s perfect for that, especially if used to mask the sound of the hustle and bustle of a busy commute. This is one of my top “go to” soundtracks for reading with when on a train.
DLS Review:
The soundtrack starts as it absolutely intends to go on. A multi-layered offering of atmospheric wordless chanting nestled alongside an orchestra of synthesised bass and drums, with exotic strings and guitar works coming together to create such a powerful evocative opening track. It pulses with rhythm and pace, gearing you up for whatever it is that’s yet to come.
Track Two takes a step back from such a locomotive of audio adrenaline, instead swaying in the subtleties of purposefully vague and delicate suggestions. It’s a track which moves from one audio soundscape to the next. That is until it eventually bleeds into Track Three which is one pumped up with momentum and increasing urgency, until that haunting heart-stop moment when we’re left waiting in the stillness of anticipation.
Track Four bursts out with a choir of male vocals creating a powerful wall of strength before the drums come crashing in and a sound of military might overwhelms the music. It’s a magnificent piece of audio excellence, full of power and prominence.
Track Five on the other hand submerges us into a tranquil and otherworldly piece, whispering a delicateness until an eerie burst of thunderous bass launches itself into the music turning the tide to something of absolute dominance and drama. Thundering movement and colossal power can be heard through the music as it marches to an abrupt end.
Track Six starts out like a ghostly affair, with quiet whisperings and suggestions rising upwards through a fog of quiet tones.
Track Seven is one entangled in exotic and darkly tempting murmurings, with strange mutations of Ancient Asian traditions blending into this melting pot of intoxicating mystical music.
Track Eight is a quietly moving and suggestive offering, barely over a minute in length before Track Nine steps up with one of the most moving pieces of the soundtrack. Entitled ‘Goodbye My Love’ this is pure unadulterated evocative magnificence, with haunting strings and horns quietly fleshing out the background before the most beautiful of female vocals come in, delivering wordless promises of absolute devotion. As serene as it is sublime, this piece alone shows the absolute talent of Bates.
Track Ten on the other hand is a world away, seething with tension, and bubbling over with barely supressed anticipation for the horrors to come.
Track Eleven is a more reserved but equally as eerie. Quiet whispered calls and a building momentum gradually emerging as the track progresses onwards.
From here on the tracks continue with just as much magnificence and evocative power as those preceding them. From tracks of whispered and intoxicating sublimeness, to monstrous bouts of orchestral dominance – the entire soundtrack is a audio journey quite frankly unlike any other.
As a soundtrack for reading to:
The soundtrack as a whole:
© DLS Reviews
