Video games have certainly come a long way since my days of late childhood playing 'Pitfall' on my friend's Atari or sitting in my parents living room playing 'Donkey Kong' on my Colecovision system. Remember that theme music? Jesus, how could you forget? Well now video games have freakin' soundtracks! Case in point, the new compilation of songs featured on the most recent installment of the Rainbow Six game series which contains mostly high energy, riff-heavy hardcore, metal, and emo tracks.

Frankly, things don't start off too well. This is music I basically ran from since the late 1990s. Songs by bands who wear baggy pants, hoodies and gold chains. Wannabe heavy bands who still keep it real by flashing made-up gang symbols that no one recognizes. That's pretty much the image that the tracks "All My Life" by KILLING ZONE and 'Unstable' by KUSH conjure up. Typical down-tuned nu metal riffs underneath pussified bullshit rap. Didn't we get enough of that 5 years ago? Also on the first half of the disc are two tracks by the band NOT FORGOTTEN. Nice name, unfortunately these two songs are the same old modern boring emo rock that sounds like every other modern boring emo band. NOT FORGOTTEN will soon be forgotten.

Fortunately by track 7, things get dramatically better. The "Rainbow Six: Lockdown Theme" blends Bill Brown's intense movie-style score "Rainbow Six Theme" and the heavy guitar of FEAR FACTORY's "Lockdown". It works very well. With track 9 we get to the highlight "Like Light To The Flies" by the Orlando Florida band TRIVIUM. This song is fueled in classic thrash, death metal, and even modern prog and emo. It features incredibly tight rhythms and melodic harmony leads, topped off with searing vocals. It strikes defiantly as a throwback that without sounding dated (actually, it's more like a breath of fresh air). Not to be entirely outdone is STRAPPING YOUNG LAD's "Love?". SYL can bring credibility to any compilation, and this track is a full-on assault to the senses. Devin Townsend has to be the best screamer in modern metal, bar none. The soundtrack finishes in fine form with CHIMAIRA's "Eyes Of A Criminal" and DEVILDRIVER's "I Could Care Less", both of which are perfect theme songs for shooting someone in the virtual face.

Even with the weaker tracks of this soundtrack, the overall vibe is loud, aggressive, and guaranteed to work well in a video game format. Also. based on the second half of the disc, it is a good sampling of bands with which you may not be familiar. This soundtrack is one of the few to be released on its own, and it will be interesting to see if this is growing trend. I have a good feeling that it is.

- Peters

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