Silent Hill: Book of Memories [Soundtrack, Import]

Regardless of how you feel about the Vita title "Book of Memories", Silent Hil fans should be aware that the scoring of the game is fantastic and well worth the purchase.

Coming off of a rather exceptional scoring of "Downpour", Daniel Licht has outdone himself on the scoring to "Book of Memories". Fans of the older soundtracks will find much to appreciate here, as the tracks of Licht lean towards more industrial rock, and away from the "pop" atmosphere of the final few works of Akira Yamaoka.

There are 8" world" tracks: "Water World", Wood World", "Blood World", "Fire World", Light World", "Earth World", "Steel World", and "Rust World". Each of these is given a "Boss" track counterpart, except for "Rust World". I don't have an explanation for this, and it seems odd. Each of these individual "world" tracks are easily distinguishable from one another, and all have a unique feel of their own.

The 7 individual "Boss" tracks are all easily identifiable as their own, but carry a different tone than the "World" twins: whilst the World tracks tend to be slow, moody, and eerily ambient, the Boss tracks are more "industrial rock", and reminiscent of Silent Hill 1's soundtrack.

The remaining non-vocal tracks ("Opening the Book", "Quiet before the Storm", "Save Yourself", "What's on the Menu", "Action on the Dark", You're on the menu Today", "The Scare Room", and "Dangerous maneruvers") are all eerily similar to the soundscape of Licht's Work on Downpour. "The Shop Room" is almost exactly indentical to "Stalking for Dinner" from the Downpour soundtrack, except slightly altered and extended. Maybe Daniel just really loved that track? He probably goes to sleep with it on his ipod.

"Now We're Free" is an all new and original vocal track that features, of course, Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn. Bringing back mary was an incredibly good decision, especially after the questionable choice to get Jon Davis from Korn to write and sing the theme song for Downpour. I will not expand on that issue here, but I will say that bringing back Mary vindicates them, regarding Korn. The song "Now We're Free" is slow and rather quiet, proving the idea that less sometimes equals more.

"Love Psalm" features BOTH Mary McGlynn and Akira Yamaoka, so Silent hil fans will love this track, which is a reworking of the original track from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack.

In conclusion, this soundtrack is easily the best Silent Hill soundtrack since The Room's. Daniel Licht has proven he is capable of writing for the series, and breathing life into the music that, let's be honest, Yamaoka was losing interest in writing. His last two offerings were incredibly mediocre, and his increasing Indifference was showing. Licht slowly dipped his feet in the water with "Downpour", and flat out dove right in with "Book of Memories".

Regardless of how you now feel or will in the future feel about the game, that is irrelevant when considering this soundtrack. The Book of Memories soundtrack is a must have for any Silent Hill fan.

I truly can't wait to hear what Licht has in store for the series' next major installment, whenever that is!

First Amazon review!