SEAN MURRAY - composer of CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS

No, I don't think he is. I didn't really like his score for Call of Duty: World at War, because while it had some great themes (The Russian one is brilliant), he did also do some really jarring electronica for World War II, which was jarringly annoying, unlike the effective work for Modern Warfare 2 (bad music, effective in the game)

It's much better than Zimmer's output although i do agree the electronica motif that keeps popping up from time to time is annoying. But there are some pretty good standout cues, i'll name specific tracks in another time.

Demetris, I havent heard Black Ops yet, what I am saying is that Murray's previous Call of Duty work (he scored World at War, part 5 of the series) is musically a much better work (better written, etc.), but purely as a game score, Modern Warfare 2 is much better. I am talking about how things work in their respective context.

I got what's the point of that wall of noise called Modern Warfare and partially why it's so bad after a discussion with Erik and a guy who knows a lot about Remote Control methods of work. It also explains why Djawadi's work for the new Medal of Honor is so much better.

The discussion was originally about Medal of Honor, how the aim of having that kind of fully orchestral adventure was to make it a more cinematic experience. Modern Warfare 2 is supposed to work as a typical modern political action thriller movie. The plot twists, the whole story is basically an adaptation of a full techno-thriller, basically it's a game version of Tom Clancy, who often features a full war between America and something (though Clancy never talks about a war with Russia, after the fall of communism to him Russia is one of the most important allies in America, at one point even Russia joining NATO). The use of the "modern warfare", new weaponry, new tactics, use of something like Task Force 141, which seems like an even more tactically proficient team inside the CIA Special Activities Division (a kind of a supercovert special ops team) adds to the technothriller, Clancy-like story. The RC sound was originally used precisely for this kind of genre. The superdramatic (though superweak emotionally AND musically) piece for the biggest plot twist of the game (and one of the best made moments of the game, though if you know what it is the emotional impact of the scene is much smaller, it must be said, I did know it beforehand) sounds like a typical, stereotypical even, elegy for that kind of scene, had it happened in a movie. The atmospheric needs of a game score makes the music a weird wall-of-noise ambient twist on action movie. This sounds odd, is effective in the game, but as it sounds, it is. It's also unconvincing as music in general.

Now, why the score isn't so good musically. Ramin Djawadi worked on Medal of Honor completely alone for one and a half year and had a live ensemble to boot. Zimmer wasn't fully involved with Modern Warfare 2 scoring, having written only a theme and very possibly stopped to actually supervise the project, which connected everybody at hand at RC + other guys (Two Steps from Hell's Bergersen and the other guy). Instead of 18 months, they had one and half to write 7 hours of music. Lack of a definition of sound, a rather weak theme by Zimmer (he did better anthems in a shorter time, I guess, even) and a logistic nightmare of writing so much material in 6 weeks led to the disaster.