The Matrix Reloaded: The Album (U.S. Set-Enh’d-PA Version)

Matrix Reloaded – Music From and Inspired By the Motion Picture – Double CD
The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack comes on two discs packed to the gills with as much diverse entertainment as possible. There are trailers for the movies, The Animatrix and the video game; there are bonus songs apparently inspired by the movie; and, as if that weren’t enough, they even found space for music featured in the film. Despite the glaringly overdone all-markets marketing gloss, the good music, thankfully, really is worthwhile. Disc One carries a dozen tunes to rival the hard-as-nails mix of the original movie’s soundtrack. Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, the Deftones and Rage Against the Machine have all survived the four-year gap (although the Propellerheads haven’t), but now they’re joined by scene-stealing rivals Linkin Park, Fluke and, inevitably, Paul Oakenfold. It adds up to a flit-about experience, but not so Disc Two. Composer Don Davis is joined and jump-started by Rob Dougan and Juno Reactor, layering his postmodern orchestral writing with dizzyingly fast drum loops and samples. This is the album’s real musical surprise; that so many disparate styles should fuse perfectly in the score section. It’s definitely the disc that’ll more consistently recall the most stunning sequences of the film. With Revolutions, this is set to be the most experimentally diverse and widely appealing trilogy of movie soundtracks ever put on disc. –Paul Tonks