Soundtrack Review: Medal of Honor: Frontline (2002)

Posted by Jon Blough

January 29, 2009

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2002mohf Soundtrack Review: Medal of Honor: Frontline (2002) This is a review of the video game score Medal of Honor: Frontline by Michael Giacchino.

Medal of Honor: Frontline is an astounding achievement for a videogame score, let alone a soundtrack in any medium. Michael Giacchino mixes the rousing, patriotic tunes that worked so well in the first score with the choral beauty of Underground to produce a work of immense beauty and superb thematic development. The Allied theme, making a superb return, exemplifies this dualism perfectly, ranging in its performances from a boy’s solo opening “Operation Market Garden” (an immediate highlight due to that as well as the massive choral crescendos in the track’s close) to a victorious full brass unleashing in the climax of the energetic “Escaping Gotha”. “Border Town” superbly ushers in the return of both Nazi themes as couterpoints to each other (a technique woefully underused in the series), while the massive bell hits to close “Sturmgeist’s Armored Train” showcase the theme at its most dementedly bombastic. Many sub-motifs from the first score in the series show up in outstanding variations. “Shipyards of Lorient” turns the meandering U-Boat motif into a menacing brass riff, while the Panzer theme is whipped into a thunderous, John Williams-style march in “The Rowhouses”.

The score’s new elements are equally impressive. The new main theme captures both the militaristic heroism of the first score’s main theme as well as the restrained, elegant beauty of the second score’s, giving the score a dramatic anchor and practically floating over the action material (tendencies that no other video game score comes close to achieving). All performances of the new seven-note motif for the villain Sturmgeist are appropriately menacing, particularly in the way the brass growls in “Sturmgeist’s Armored Train”. The action cues, like those of the past two entries, superbly infuse the score’s thematic content into their own unique rhythms and individual motifs, the best being the racing, unrelenting, 7-minute juggernaut “Escaping Gotha”, still the crowning action achievement of Giacchino’s career. What really makes this score a masterpiece (a word I use most infrequently to describe scores) is its lengthy choral cues “After the Drop” and “Arnhem”. Both, especially the latter, use a mixture of solo voice, full choir, and strings to tragic, at times heartbreaking effect that rivals the impression left on the listener by “Hymn to the Fallen” from Saving Private Ryan. In the end, no review can truly prepare you for how good this work is, and that’s the sign of a surefire classic.

Album (79:18)
1. Operation Market Garden (5:32)
Storm in the Port (11:34)
2. Border Town (3:36)
3. U-4902 (4:44)
4. Shipyards of Lorient (3:14)
Needle in a Haystack (16:37)
5. After the Drop (5:37)
• 6. Kleveburg (3:32)
• 7. Manor House Rally (3:48)
• 8. The Halftrack Chase (3:40)
Several Bridges Too Far (13:52)
• 9. Nijimegen Bridge (3:21)
• 10. The Rowhouses (4:40)
• 11. Arnhem (5:51)
Rolling Thunder (9:48)
• 12. Emmerich Station (3:02)
• 13. Thuringer Wald Express (2:52)
• 14. Sturmgeist’s Armored Train (3:54)
The Horton’s Nest (14:32)
• 15. Approaching the Tarmac (3:47)
• 16. Clipping Their Wings (3:27)
• 17. Escaping Gotha (7:18)
• 18. The Songless Nightingale (2:46)
• 19. Hidden Track (4:29)