Artist: "Akira Yamaoka and Sota Fujimori"
Album: "Shin Contra OST"
Genre: Soundtracks
Label: Konami

Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 1/13/2008

Review: I love all sorts of video games, and on a few separate occasions, I've been known to enjoy a game's soundtrack even more than the game itself. Such was the case with the soundtrack to Contra: Shattered Soldier. As a game, SS is probably the most brutal of the Contra games (except perhaps Contra IV), and the soundtrack is no different.

All the songs in the game were composed by one of two composers: Akira Yamaoka, and Sota Fujimori. The latter does a lot of techno songs for the game that really lend themselves to the futuristic setting. They're quite in their own right, but for my money, the best part of this OST is the songs by Yamaoka. He's been working with Konami for years, but he's best known for the music he does for the Silent Hill series. That stuff is excellent too, and I recommend that you all check it out, but the songs he composed for SS can be summed up in one word: METAL! Even as you watch the opening cutscene, you'll be assaulted by glorious metal, and brutal though it may be, Yamaoka is careful to make each tune unique. You'll run the gamut from the slower paced title song, Dearest, pick up a little speed with "Mountain Area" (which plays while you're in the mountain area), and then have your face melted off by more brutal songs, like the innocuously named "Sky to Ocean". Sure, the names aren't particularly metal, but you'll be banging your head all the same.

All told, you're looking at over thirty songs from the game. The downside is that most are only around two minutes long and end rather abruptly, since the game normally loops each song right back to a spot just a few seconds into it. Still, it's a fantastic album with a lot of great songs on it, my personal favorite being the song from the start of the second stage, "Hell Drive". If you are looking to pick up the album, and I firmly believe that you should, make sure to look for it under the title "Shin Contra OST", the Japanese name of the game, as it unfortunately never saw a US release.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)