Silva Screen Records delivers a powerful themed compilation album that picks from the powerful, pulsating and contemporary Iron Man scores...

I wanted start off by confessing that while I enjoyed all three Iron Man movies I didn't really find the music to be anything special. The scores to Iron Man and Iron Man 2 didn't offer up much more than a collection of electric guitar fuelled power themes and Brian Tyler's soundtrack to Iron Man 3 was functional but almost instantly forgettable.

So a compilation album of all three scores (given that the person compiling the playlist had a love of the subject matter), to me, sounded like a much better idea than owning all three albums. While this collection does seem to have picked some of the better, and more memorable tracks from the original scores, it's still a little on the average side.

Composed by Ramin Djawadi (Iron Man), John Debney (Iron Man 2) and Brian Tyler (Iron Man 3). This release brings together newly recorded versions from London Music Works of five themes from each of the trio of films and includes landmark musical moments, 'Driving With The Top Down', 'I Am Iron Man' and 'Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Titles)'.

As you'd expect - this being a Silva Screen Records release - the orchestrations are as about as close to the originals as you could possibly get. As I don't actually own the scores to the first two movies, I can't really comment on those tracks, but the tracks for Iron Man 3 are almost indistinguishable from the originals. In fact (and I'll probably be strung up for this) tracks like 'Iron Man 3' sound crisper and better mixed than the original. Actually, I preferred the London Music Works version on all of the Iron Man 3, with the possible exception of 'Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Titles)' in which the original does sound quite a bit more polished.

Track listing:

Iron Man

01 - 'Driving With The Top Down'
02 - 'Merchant Of Death'
03 - 'Mark I'
04 - 'Mark II'
05 - 'Iron Man'

Iron Man 2

06 - 'Sledgehammer V2'
07 - 'New Element/Particle Accelerator'
08 - 'Sledgehammer'
09 - 'Iron Man Battles The Drones'
10 - 'I Am Iron Man'

Iron Man 3

11 - 'Iron Man 3'
12 - 'Attack On 10880 Malibu Point'
13 - 'New Beginnings'
14 - 'Stark'
15 - 'Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Titles)'

8

Darren Rea