Review Summary: At only a half an hour in length, one would think more of the show’s score music would be included.
Sporting the length of an EP at a short 28 minutes, the first “volume” of albums consisting of music from the zombie-apocalypse TV drama
The Walking Dead, appears unusually late into the third season of the show. The term “volume” might give the impression that this album is an expansive collection of score music and tracks by featured artists selected from the first three seasons of the show. With there being so much to choose from, that may seem like the obvious route to take, but
The Walking Dead: Original Soundtrack - Vol. 1 instead only contains a brief eight tracks, with seven of them being by other artists that appeared only within the show’s ongoing third season, and the only piece of score music from the show’s composer Bear McCreary appearing in a remixed form by UNKLE instead of as the show’s original opening theme.
It’s not remotely uncommon for a soundtrack to be exclusively comprised of songs by various artists and the main theme, but with only eight songs, this soundtrack feels very unsatisfying and incomplete. Not to mention that despite there being no score music included, it would have nice, if not mandatory, for the show’s very recognizable main title theme to at least be included in its unaltered original form. UNKLE’s remix adds a more retro vibe to the theme which is interesting, but would be more suited as the main title theme for a Nintendo video game adaptation of the show. Though while that remix may zap the main title theme of the urgent tone it sets for each of the show’s episodes, the remainder of the songs on the soundtrack - although there are very few of them - consistently maintain the show’s distinctly ominous and unsettling aura that permeates throughout the tracks despite them being by artists who normally wouldn’t share anything in common with one another in any other context.
However, this only really shows that this limited bundle of eight songs were all chosen appropriately and well, when the first volume in the show’s series of soundtrack albums could have used a much more varied and broad selection of tracks instead. That would have prevented
The Walking Dead: Original Soundtrack - Vol. 1 from being such an unfulfilling disappointment of a soundtrack album, especially for a soundtrack album debut that has arrived so late into the show’s lifespan.
