Review Summary: The soundtrack to the endless bloodshed
Everyone knows by now that Zombies is mostly the only reason anyone buys a Call of Duty game under the Treyarch name anymore. Lets face it, the multiplayer in these games is terrible if not a complete waste of time. Zombies is a game mode that offers endless fun where you can kill endless hordes of the undead trying to survive as long as possible. I'm not here to review the game though, but the soundtrack that is spread over Call of Duty: World At War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, and it is a damn fun soundtrack indeed.
“Damned” is a fitting opener for the soundtrack, essentially being the haunting piano melody that everyone hears on the Black Ops Zombie Mode menu when you start up the game. Its a short piece, but it sets the mood for the soundtrack and is a perfect intro for things to come. This soundtrack features all of the songs we have heard from all of the zombie maps collectively, plus some new tracks thrown in. Songs like “Abra Macabre” and Voice In Your Head” are dark instrumental pieces that go along great with the mood of the environments the player is immersed in with Zombies, but also serve as fun pieces to listen to on their own. The rock/metal cuts are the true gems here though. Throughout the zombie maps players could find hidden songs by singer Elena Seigman, and nearly all of them are awesome. Tracks like “The One” and “Beauty of Annihilation” from the maps Shi No Numa and Der Reise respectively are great hard rock tracks that have distorted riffs and surprisingly good female vocals. “115” is easily the best song on the soundtrack though, with blistering riffs and drums with screamed, crazed vocals mixed with cleans to make an instantly memorable song.
Dead Ops Arcade (a stupid new mode attached to Zombies in Black Ops) saw players killing endless hordes of undead in a arcade style setting, complete with that Daft Punk Tron-esque sounding music to accompany it. Tracks like “Slight Chance of Zombies”, “Zombies Don't Surf”, and “Temple” sound catchy at times but can be extremely boring instrumentals that sound so out of place, which in turn disrupts the dark undercurrent of the soundtrack and makes you wonder why they had to be included here in the first place. By the time the guitars fade out at the end of “Undone” though, you won't feel like you wasted your time with this. This is a fun soundtrack; nothing groundbreaking, nothing special, just fun music to kill Zombies to or to listen to just because its entertaining.
Despite its lengthy total of seventeen tracks, the Zombies Soundtrack flows quite well. The instrumentals and actual songs are nicely spread out over the album and nothing here seems too long or forced besides the arcade songs from Dead Ops. Treyarch did a good thing here releasing this soundtrack, because there were a lot of songs that were actually quite good in Zombies that we only ever really got to hear on occasion in the game itself while playing through it. Check this out if you are a fan of Zombies or are looking for a fun soundtrack to listen to.
