Raiden V Soundtrack

Raiden V Soundtrack, Yoshimi Kudo, 2016

You have to admire genuine dedication. Take the staff of Seibu Kaihatsu, creators of the Raiden franchise. As the company slid into financial difficulty from the late 1990s onwards and shifted its attention towards adult mahjong arcade games, key staff members left, formed a new company called MOSS, acquired the rights to Raiden, and ensured that the series would continue through several new instalments. After producing the franchise’s third and fourth main entries, MOSS reached a milestone with Raiden V in 2016, a full 26 years after the original Raiden hit arcades. As with earlier MOSS-developed entries in the series, Raiden V received solid, if not rapturous, reviews. Unsurprisingly, it introduced few real innovations to the formula on which the franchise had long thrived, but once again delivered sturdy bullet-hell entertainment, now slightly more approachable for newcomers than previous Raiden games.

Since Raiden II, Go Sato had become the series’ resident composer, producing one of the all-time great shoot ’em up scores with Raiden DX in 1997. Interestingly, MOSS chose to alter course for Raiden V. In 2013 the studio had released another shooter, Caladrius, followed in 2014 by Caladrius Blaze, both scored by Hitoshi Sakimoto’s Basiscape collective. The developers must have been especially impressed by the contribution of one particular Basiscape member, because for Raiden V they brought back Yoshimi Kudo. Having joined Basiscape in 2008, Kudo had already amassed dozens of credits as composer, arranger and performer by the time he wrote the Raiden V soundtrack. Intriguingly, despite that wealth of experience, he had had very few, if any, chances to score an entire game on his own.

One might therefore hear the Raiden V soundtrack as the work of a composer eager to make a decisive statement and prove what he can do. If that was Kudo’s aim, he succeeded emphatically. His score is a behemoth, with many tracks building immense walls of sound that nevertheless manage to organise their relentlessly churning material into coherent musical arcs. Kudo clearly wants to impress, to overwhelm, and so Raiden V rarely does anything by halves. It is easily one of the most ambitious and densely orchestrated action-game scores ever written.

Kudo’s musical influences, as described in interviews, offer some indication of how he approached Raiden V. After taking up the guitar in junior high school, he formed a band that mostly covered the power and progressive metal groups popular at the time, including Angra and Dream Theater. In the same interview, he also stressed the breadth of his musical interests and his desire to seek out fresh approaches.

Now, the Raiden V soundtrack is not stylistically unprecedented. Through a monumental blend of finely wrought orchestral writing, howling metal guitars and drums, and carefully applied electronic textures, Kudo creates a musical compound that can be read along several lines. One could hear it as a continuation and refinement of a long Japanese game-music tradition that fuses those three elements; even within the shoot ’em up field alone, Motoi Sakuraba’s Sol-Feace points in a related direction. Elsewhere, Raiden V resembles an overachieving version of contemporary percussion-heavy action scoring in both film and games. And of course it draws heavily on the rhythmic virtuosity of progressive metal and the elaborate ornamentation of power metal.

Yet however many traditions it draws upon, Raiden V ultimately stands as an almost unique game score. Not because it reinvents the wheel, but because Kudo takes an already demanding formula and executes it with a level of assurance that leaves the competition far behind. His dizzying orchestrations are as opulent as they are clever and colourful, and there is no shortage of substance beneath the surface spectacle. Most tracks run between six and ten minutes, shaped not merely by constantly shifting timbres and rhythms but also by astutely placed melodic ideas, often entrusted to the piano, which provide moments of focus and brief relief amid the tumult.

On paper, all of this might seem like the polar opposite of earlier franchise landmarks such as Raiden and Raiden DX, which fired off gigantic hooks in quick succession while keeping the arrangements firmly in service of those melodies. And yet the same appetite for maximalism links Raiden V to those earlier scores: the drive to create the largest, most overwhelming sound possible. What changes are the means rather than the ambition.

Most of the stage themes, beginning with “Unknown Pollution”, function as virtuoso studies in pounding, ferociously driven action music. It is something so much modern film and game scoring aspires to, but only rarely with this level of inspiration. Even at its most bombastic, the score never becomes tiresome or monotonous, thanks in large part to Kudo’s exceptional drum programming. Letting rock drums carry most of the soundtrack’s thunderous rhythms is a smart decision, giving them a vibrancy that more synthetic programming often lacks. More important still are the constant syncopations that push the music onwards while keeping its momentum sufficiently surprising to sustain interest even when the melodic writing or orchestral density temporarily thins. As a result, “Apostle’s Maraud”, “Intellect and Intelligence”, “Fortress of Philosophy” and “Far Journey” all emerge as monolithic yet astonishingly agile epics.

At the same time, Kudo knows when to adjust his method to reflect a more specific setting. “Secret Cave” opens up some space for Middle Eastern melodic contours against acoustic percussion. Its pace is slower, and its melodies, especially in the strings, are more languid and expansive. Those choices give the music a vaguely Lawrence of Arabia-like widescreen appeal without ever tipping into derivation. “Hide-and-Seek in a Sea” adopts lighter orchestration, led by a racing piano motif and a prominent flute line, to evoke its aquatic setting. The cue proves convincingly that Kudo can turn his trademark wall of sound to more atmospheric ends as well. At the other extreme lies “It’s Name Valbarossa”, which feels almost like music for an RTS score in which colossal armies are going to war. Driven by pounding, belligerent rhythms, it achieves a sound that is both hypnotic and stirringly martial.

After all this, where can the score possibly go for its finale? Raiden V finds an entirely convincing answer in “Crystal of Abyss”. Rather than attempting to make the music still denser or more complicated, Kudo divides it into a sequence of clearly defined, comparatively straightforward sections and makes each of them as overwhelmingly massive as possible. The perfect example is the sudden plunge from the portentous slow opening into a towering choral melody, backed by deep strings churning away at furious speed as if their lives depended on it. It is a goosebump-inducing contrast, made even more potent once Kudo adds speed-metal guitars. He then offsets this staggering intensity with string interludes of near-operatic grace, resulting in a genuine tour de force. It is yet another example of how the Raiden V soundtrack throws absolutely everything it has at the listener, and is saved from excess by a level of musical intelligence that remains truly rare.