James Bond may have various soundtracks to his name but he still only has one official computer game soundtrack composed by Tommy Tallerico. However being saddled with such a famous signiture tune, you’d forgive him for a complete shortfall of original tunes. Tommy either daunted by the task or by contractual obligation then works the same old bond theme through every single one of the 17 tracks on this 007: Tomorrow Never Dies Soundtrack at some point or another. Some may think its genius and to an extent it is but on long playing it is near lunacy.
The opening track “James Bond Theme” is just the same old Bond theme, overused yet still not without its charm is most definitely passable before out come different songs such as “Confrontation”, “PPK” and “Alarm”all using the same chord progressions of the Bond theme, some more subtle than others basically replaying the same song over with slightly different instrumentation, or at a different pace. Some work better than others but by the time you’re over the half way point you really do begin to wonder if you can survive the rest of the cd!
Its a bit of shame though because if taken completely separately, the songs stand much better on their own. Songs such as “Outpost” with its sneaky guitar riffs could actually be very good compositions but when placed together on the same cd its just too much.
Just think if someone decided to make an entire soundtrack out of the Prelude for Final Fantasy and just played it with a few different instruments at slightly different tempos – then you will know how it sounds. Novel – but not lasting.