Soundtrack Review: Homefront (2011)

Homefront Soundtrack Review: This is a review of the video game score Homefront by Matthew Harwood.

"Homefront does what it is supposed to do, give the game a tight and frantic action feel."

Homefront is the latest video game developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ. It's a first-person shooter where you play as part of a resistance movement fighting against a near-future Korean military occuptation of the United states. The year is 2017 and a Korean force actually invades the United States. The nerve! Nevertheless, this game has a lot going for it and it's music is composed by Matthew Harwood.

Track List

Matthew Harwood said that Homefront gave him some new challenges. To immerse himself in a world where you have to defend your nation in a way that Homefront portrays it needed special attention. It is mostly an orchestral score fused with electronic elements and also some Asian percussion and acoustic and electric guitar. Sounds like an interesting mix, but is it really?

Samey

As you can see from my individual cue rating, it's quite high, but there's also a lot of 4 stars which is a warning. The problem with Homefront is that it sounds like the same cue all the time, remixed and reworked. It's good, but there's little in the way of highs and lows. The cue I am talking about sounds like every action game score, which is unfortunate, but there are some exceptions.

'Main Theme' is actually a very good main theme, well composed, greatly orchestrated and really give the impression that this will be something special. 'Parking Lot Fight' is the first time we hear something very different. Harwood steps outside of his action score formula and gives us what we want. Some heavy guitars, powerful percussion and an all-out bad-ass action cue that leaves us drooling for more. 'Burnt Oasis' is the only non-action cue on the score gives us flute built upon a nice theme. More of this please!

Conclusion

There's over 1 hour of music here, but 90% is on auto pilot. It's really good as an action score within a game where you don't have time to stop listening to the music, but just go kill some enemies. As a standalone listen, it doesn't represent itself so well. Even though the cue ratings are quite high for most cues, I really wanted a lot more. There are a couple of standout cues that shows what Matthew Harwood can do outside of the formulaic action scoring, which he does very well. Homefront does what it is supposed to do, give the game a tight and frantic action feel.

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Listen to the Homefront soundtrack by Matthew Harwood below: