Review Summary: While this music lacks anything signature about the game itself, Noisia proves that their pulsating drum and bass assaults are well-suited to score the gritty Devil May Cry reboot.
With major film and video game releases becoming more open to featuring hits from Skrillex on their soundtracks, and score composers increasingly warming up to the idea of incorporating elements of bass drops and wubbing into their compositions, visual-based media has been flirting with the signature characteristics of the incredibly popular brand of bass-heavy dubstep to recently rule the mainstream electronic music scene; promptly replacing industrial rock’s once firmly planted dominance in the music of video games and movies. Though up until this point, composer’s have really only integrated dubstep traits into their score music, and there hasn’t really been a score that is predominately dubstep.
And now here we are with Dutch drum and bass trio, Noisia’s original score for the reboot entry of the highly popular hack and slash Japanese video game series,
Devil May Cry. The first score for a major video game to be primarily comprised of dubstep music, and entirely composed by one of the most popular and acclaimed artists in the scene.
What works marvelously about the score overall is how perfectly Noisia’s music goes hand in hand with everything about the game itself. Noisia’s relentless onslaught of pounding beats and throbbing synths at breakneck pacing, fits the high-octane speeds of the rapid-succession violence in a beat ‘em up/hack and slash game such as
Devil May Cry. First person shooter games such as
Borderlands 2 and
Far Cry 3 that have dubstep aspects in their scores lack the constant barrage of immediate and continously pummeling action that is complemented so well by the unhinged, nonstop nature of Noisia’s music. The only breaks from the thrilling sensation are tense moments of ominous ambient music that serve as buildups to sudden thrusts into power surges that lurk around every corner of the tracks on the score.
Noisia was an excellent pick for an artist to create a dubstep-oriented score, because just as they do on their own albums, Noisia strays far from the set path and delves into a large number of overlooked electronic music subgenres. Among these being glitch, tech-house, jungle music, breakbeat, and drill’n’bass, which makes for a flavorful and varied template of sounds that doesn’t only stay by conventional bass drops and repetitive wubs, and allows creativity to freely inhabit every angle of the tracks without constrictions. Noisia even includes tracks among the collection that playfully pay tribute to the classic bleeps and bloops of arcade machine sounds and vintage nintendo background music; most likely in celebration of the trio’s first time creating music for a video game.
However, the main flaw with the
DmC OST is that the music really lacks any kind of authentic stylistic stamp from the game. While
Far Cry 3’s score for example, fused dubstep with tribal drums and ethnic chanting that was prevalent within that game’s themes, the
DmC OST really just feels like a standard Noisia album with the
Devil May Cry name tagged on, aside from a few minüte details, and one that doesn’t really do too much to forward Noisia’s sound towards untouched areas.
But despite anything distinct about the game’s style feeling absent from this score, Noisia has crafted music that goes perfectly with the genre of game the
Devil May Cry series apart of. This is a score that’s sheer speed and force is unmatched by any contemporary score composers, and is also easily listenable without the game accompanying it.
