Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Soundtrack

 (11 customer reviews)

Halo 10th Anniversary. How do you celebrate it? By re-releasing the game reimaged from the ground up. How do you make an already awesome set of music sound even more amazing? Put a full orchestra behind it, that's how!

I read a comment on a blog post about this soundtrack coming out. The person made the comment "why do they need to mess up the music we all know and love!?" I think I'd like to tackle that question and the answer is simple. They haven't messed it up, at ALL. In fact, they've done it a great deal of justice.

Every track is orchestrated from the original Martin O'Donnell and Mark Salvatore scores. Note for note, this is the original Halo soundtrack and done in full orchestra style coming via the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra (guess the Lucas company has an orchestra, which is something I never knew).

If you are a fan of the Halo music, I highly encourage you to pick this disc (or buy the MP3 edition). You almost can't be disappointed.

When I bought this album I wasn't quite sure of what I was getting. Was this just the first Halo: Combat Evolved soundtrack with just a live orchestra behind it now or was it something else? I have come to find out that it's the latter with a live orchestra.

If you've listened to Halo music for a long time then when you listen to this you'll notice a difference. Paul Lipson, Lennie Moore, Tom Salta, and Brian Trifon have taken the main themes that Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori wrote and have put there own twist to it. Some of Paul's, Lennie's, Tom's, and Brian's interpretations are good, others not so much, and some are interesting. One reviewer said that this album was note for note with the original Halo soundtrack. To me that's not true. I heard some tracks in this release that I don't ever remember hearing in the original. If you are a fan of the guitars, drums, and chanting of monks then you'll really enjoy this album. It seems like every other track has...Read more

I received this finally, and was extremely pleased to see that it hadn't been damaged. I was surprised however, to find that "Opening Suite" (From the original halo soundtrack) was substituted for "Random Slipspace Trajectory" (the "remastered" version of Opening Suite)either way, the rest of the album is the "remastered" soundtrack, and sounds marvelous.