By Gregory Reveret

Milan Records, out now

The latest iteration of Resident Evil gets its own soundtrack release.

Reveret brings us a somewhat unexpected mixture of sounds – plenty of percussion, electric guitars, chants, musique concrete, the whole nine yards. It starts quite loudly, with bombastic percussion that remains a heavy presence throughout, but it doesn’t take long for a more exotic African element comes in. This is a nice touch, reflecting the South African location and setting.

While the album begins with brash percussion and vocal chants, it progresses well through various other genres of music. The individual themes for the various characters are harder to pick out without referring to the track listing, so this isn’t a soundtrack of the classical type – the lack of straightforward orchestral material would be a giveaway on that front – but rather a progression of tonal and mood movements.

A lot of it sounds, to start with, as if it’s all being played on sophisticated synths by the composer – there are even some moments that really have the sound of 1980s Doctor Who scores to a slight but recognisable degree – but this is lulling the listener into a false-ish impression.

As well as the various vocal and choral tracks, the score flows on through the pounding and percussive stages that you’d expect of an action/horror score, and into pulsating rave elements, and relaxing and mysterious moments of chill electronica. On the face of it, it should all come over as a jumbled mess of sound and noise, but somehow… Somehow it doesn’t. The album is curated and edited together so well that it just works. It’s a banging score, on several levels, with the raucous and the flowing and the chill.

It’s probably not the sort of score that immediately shouts to be bedtime listening, or even background to the housework, but it’s certainly one that calls to be used in a gaming context, as background to the right sort of game – Resident Evil 6 perhaps, and certainly the Far Cry or Dead Island franchises.

Verdict: A surprisingly darkly fun score that catches the attention in unexpected yet enjoyable ways. 8/10

David A McIntee