The vocals in “Red Sun” are more brooding and almost angsty, but the guitar solos are still surprisingly technical, offering a solid contrast between the verses and the bridges. “Red Sun” has a lower, softer vocal style compared to “Rules of Nature” and its battlecry of a chorus-starter. Other songs simmer down a bit, focusing more on atmosphere for the intense wartime setting of the game. “The Hot Wind Blowing” even brings European DJ Ferry Corsten and Armored Saint (and former Anthrax) vocalist John Bush on board with a groovy, almost dance-able combination of heavy metal riffs and start-stop electronic paces. The electronic influences in “I’m My Own Master Now” are furious in pace and almost suffocating in speed, amped up on drum n’ bass energy (and “nanobots”) with electric guitars in the background for a nice bit of texture. On the less metal side, “The Only Thing I Know For Real” is drenched in adrenaline, a fighting song from start to finish with Gatling-gun pacing from the electric beats, but with a monster guitar solo smack dab in the middle. It’s the kind of music you’d expect to play while a pro wrestler steps into the ring…while riding a tank and dressed like tweaked-out Robocop. The biggest hit (and the possible successor to the “Guile’s Theme Goes With Anything” meme) “Rules of Nature” is an embodiment of enormous smashing rhythms, blasting metal riffs, and one of the hardest hitting entries of a chorus in any metal song in recent memory. Dancing between explosive electronic cluster-bombs and a battle-crying metal aesthetic, the soundtrack to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is almost delusionally badass, but it’s also some of the most intense game music to ever reach the public’s ears. It’s a massive mix of industrial, metal and drum n’ bass that shamelessly admits its over-the-top nature at every possible moment. While most of his past works run the gambit from medieval fantasy warfare like The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth or the kid-friendliness of Surf’s Up, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a big shift in gears for Christopherson. Jamie Christopherson, best known as the main contributor to the music for the cult film The Crow: Wicked Prayer, is no stranger to composing the music for video games, though not anything of this variety. It was big, it was ridiculous, it was in-your-face at every possible opportunity. Platinum Games’ were notorious for adding a sense of enormous, energized, over-the-top spectacle to their action games (with their critical darlings Bayonetta and Vanquish) and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was no different. Metal Gear Rising might have been the controversial fist-to-face action counterpart to the Metal Gear Solid series, but it earned itself quite a bit of critical acclaim. Review Summary: Metal Gear Rising's soundtrack is absurdly intense, a fever dream of metal/electronic bliss that perfectly complements the game it's in.

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