Plug into your headphones and into The Matrix

The Matrix is back and with The Matrix: Reloaded and another soundtrack to boot! Of course, how ironic that the second movie should come out with a two disc CD. So that means I have two CDs to go over. Joy, joy. Well, this time I’ll save you the in-depth detail of song to song – I’ll just be short and to the point, along with a “yay” or “nay” to point out whether or not I thought the song was any good. But as I mentioned in the Con area, it does depend on your taste in music at times.

Disc 1
1.) Linkin Park – “Session” Yay! There’s no singing, just straight up electronic flowing with a rockin’ rythym. Short and sweet, this song makes for a great intro, and if you’ve heard any Linkin Park or the first Matrix CD, then you have some idea of what to expect.

2.) Marilyn Manson – “This Is The New Sh*t” Yay! I don’t listen to Marilyn Manson that much (if ever) but I do love this song. It’s so funky and way electronic to an almost spastic degree with Manson belting out his words. It’s a great song to just crank up and rock out to. Equivalent to Neo kicking some major agent butt. Just don’t listen to this one with small children around – or any children for that matter.

3.) Rob Zombie – “Reload” Yay! Another zapping song here, heavy on the raging guitars please! And it’s got a bit of that electronic CD skipping action. It’s loud and bold and fast paced heavy rockin’ Rob Zombie here. If you’ve never heard Rob Zombie before, here’s a pretty good taste of his work.

4.) Rob Dougan – “Furious Angels” Yay! If you didn’t hear Rob D’s work on the first CD (that’s a shame) then you’ll figure him out on this one. No lyrics; he’s one of those guys who takes sounds and instruments and slaps them together to make some good stuff. There’s a lot of strings and drums here with just a little extra to help lace it all together in a very ominous sounding way. It gets a little hectic near the end (on purpose) and I don’t know if I like that, but eh, whatever floats the guy’s boat.

5.) Deftones – “Lucky You” Nay. Mmm…never been a big fan of the Deftones. Sorry. This one I can handle though. It’s not one of my favorites. It’s really chilled out and kind of flat in some respects. You sort of wait for it to get out of the slightly fuzzy sounding phase and get up and do something…buuuut it doesn’t.

6.) Team Sleep – “The Passportal 2” Yay! Although this one is kind of different, and electronically made all the way, it’s not bad. It does get a little repetitive after a bit, but the song isn’t too long to get annoying and make you skip. It’s mellow – probably one of the mellowest songs you’ll hear on this whole thing. The makers of this song do their name justice.

7.) P.O.D. – “Sleeping Awake” Yay! After Team Sleep, you’d better turn down your speakers because P.O.D. just blasts into their song. This is one I like to sing along to, “Dreaming of Zion away….do you see what I see?” It’s typical P.O.D. style here – some heavy rock (or are you more familiar with Nickelback?) with a lil breakdown in the middle before building back up and the guys totally rocking out at the end.

8.) Unloco – “Bruises” Yay! Another rocking song here by guys I’ve never heard of. This song barely makes the “yay” though because sometimes it seems like the singer is doing his own thing and forgot about the guys on the instruments. If you don’t like heavy guitar and occasional screaming, skip this one.

9.) Rage Against The Machine – “Calm Like A Bomb” Nay. I haven’t listened to this one for a while though. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been a big fan of Rage Against the Machine. Yea. Too much of funky rock (yes, funky) with a guy, um, kind of singing and then the rest of the time screaming his lungs out. Couldn’t take all the screaming. I mean, I can do some, but yea…

10.) Oakenfold – “Dread Rock” Yay! Electronic dance type music all the way baby! Got your glow sticks ready? It’s fast and stylish and doesn’t get very repetitive despite the same underlying tone and rhythm it’s got going on throughout the song – it just keeps getting stuff added in and taken out to keep it running nicely. There’s even a little chorus action near the middle of the song.

11.) Fluke – “Zion” Yay! Did you see the movie? Remember the 10 minute long scene with the dancing and sex that everyone wished was shorter? Well here’s the music for that piece (hence the name “Zion”) The majority of this is electronic aside from the drums that are beating throughout the song. It does get a lil repetitive after a bit, but the song isn’t really long enough that it’ll bug you.

12.) Dave Matthews Band – “When The World Ends (Oakenfold Remix)” Yay! Ironically, at first I didn’t like this song – it was too weird. It starts off with some unhappy piano and then grows into more, with a few weird sounds behind the music (including Dave saying things with an echo), but with the same depressed (but not exactly in a bad way) sound. Then when Dave starts singing the music kinds of disappear and he’s pretty much on his own. The music does come back in full to back him though. But man, it is a weird song. Sometimes it’s like his words run together and the lack of backup music is odd – but I grew to like it a lot it so maybe you will too.


Disc 2: (the tracks merit times here)
(oh, and these are all Yay! by the way.)

1.) Don Davis, “Main Title” – 1:30 Here is your main Matrix theme right here baby. Very big on trumpets and brass and fast paced strings, along with the occasional BANG on the drums and other percussion instruments. But this is just an intro…

2.) Don Davis, “Trinity Dream” – 1:56 Neo’s dream of Trinity’s fate. Once again, we’ve got the Matrix theme going on, especially heavy on the percussion thumping here – but it’s just a dream so it’s pretty short too. A bad dream…

3.) Juno Reactor Featuring Gocoo, “Teahouse” – 1:04 Another short one, but here it’s a fight between Neo and well, go see the movie! (hehe) A lot of drums and percussion here…actually that’s almost what the entire song is made up of, and they’re all put together pretty fast too.

4.) Rob Dougan, “Chateau” – 3:23 I love this one. This is my favorite track right here. We go right into some smooth electronic sounds with that definite Rob Dougan feel to it – only this time we get more symphony into it. It’s another fast paced song from Neo fighting about 4 or 5 guys with many various weapons. Can’t get much more interesting than that! But this song is unique in that it’s like a mix of both Rob and Don’s work together; Rob’s electronic uniqueness and Don’s Matrix theme underlying it all – and that right there is pretty awesome. I just wish it were longer.

5.) Juno Reactor, “Mona Lisa Overdrive” – 10:08 Trinity, Morpheus, and the Key Maker need to get away from jus about everybody – so here we have some great stuff by Juno Reactor (proud to say I’ve heard of them before). Though the length may seem daunting, it’s pretty good and changing all the time. It’s almost like another mixture with Don’s work thrown in! Symphony (mostly percussion of various kinds and strings) and electronic music clash into what turns out to be one great, beating, funky, perfect-for-the-Matrix, chase scene song.

6.) Juno Reactor vs. Don Davis, “Burly Brawl”– 5:52 This one was pretty good, but after a while I didn’t like it as much as some of the others. Maybe Juno and Don shouldn’t vs. each other. Hehe. Some heavy beats here, with an anxious tone to it – and then with a little bit of obvious Matrix theme taking over before going back to more Juno-like work. It’s got a “time is of the essence” feel to it – but I do love the chorus that opens up in this piece. However, the piece just got faster and faster as time went on (purposely) and that I didn’t quite enjoy…

7.) Don Davis, “Matrix Reloaded Suite”– 17:36 Um, okay, I’m not going to go through this one because it’s so long. Just think of it as pretty much the music for the entire movie (aside from all aforementioned songs) put together in one long, well, suite! It’s good, but man, is it long, so you’d better enjoy soundtracks, Matrix music, and have patience. I do enjoy the end though – I always love the way people end their music with a flair of some kind. It’s pretty freakin’ good – but it’s still no track 17 of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

It’s kind of too bad they couldn’t fit all this great stuff onto one CD, because I’d love to switch from This Is The New Sh*t and Chateau. Trust me – I even tried burning it that way once. Hehe. So if you’re into heavy rock, loud and in your face symphony, then see what this soundtrack has to offer you. If you’re not…well, try anyway – you never know what you might like.

NT