About the Soundtrack:  Not many people had seen the film, Babylon A.D., let alone heard the score, so it's no surprise that this soundtrack release has slipped through the online soundtrack community with minimal coverage. The composer, Atli Orvarsson, is another Hans Zimmer protege but his music is not as derivative as the other composers who hail from that same camp. As you'll read in my review below, my problem with the score is less about originality and more about the dead space.

The score-only soundtrack was released on the Varese Sarabande label and offers a rather generous tally of nearly 60 minutes of music. This album, naturally, is not to be confused with the song album that the film also yielded.

 

What You Need to Know:  Babylon A.D. is as enjoyable as it is dull. Allow me to explain. This is a score that delivers an original and emotional output through its first half hour of its running time, utilizing a humanistic tone that serves the template of the film well. It then abruptly stops and gives way to quite a dormant, stifling atmospheric underscore. Needless to stay, it was quite a drop off.

As I listened to the first portion of this score, I was really becoming motivated and anxious to proclaim to the worldwide net that "Babylon A.D." was an unheralded gem that everyone one should listen to. There is a nice blend of emotive statements and tempered action melodies in its opening run that gave "Babylon" a unique balance, making it a luring and compelling listen. Alas, when the vocals and the motifs disappeared, all that was left in their place were the stalled elements of a poorly designed underscore. Really, I had trouble remaining patient with these tracks and found myself tempted to skip from one to the next. Most disappointing about this, however, is that I could tell that Orvarsson has true talent but that it got led astray in the development of this score.

This very well might be an example of yet another soundtrack that would have benefited from a better job of editing. Specifically, if 10 minutes were removed from the plodding underscore and the highlights from the album's first act were spread out a bit more, then "Babylon A.D." would have functioned better as a soundtrack experience. Still, the bright side is that there is a new composer on the radar that shows a capability of creating interesting and original works. If only he had the chance to do it in full with "Babylon A.D."

 

Final Score: A top heavy soundtrack, "Babylon A.D." truly has some strong points that are worthy of your attention, but the vacancy of emotion in the underscore really does make this one a tough sell.