Walt Disney Records release Geoff Zanelli's score for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. As with the previous Pirates of the Caribbean films, and with a nod to its swashbuckling predecessors in the genre, it is packed with melodies filled with excitement and intrigue as befits the pirates' latest journey. The movie finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way when deadly ghost sailors, led by the terrifying Captain Salazar, escape from the Devil's Triangle bent on killing every pirate at sea - notably Jack. Jack's only hope of survival lies in the legendary Trident of Poseidon...

While this score is credited to Geoff Zanelli, you may be surprised to discover that there are a lot of tracks that house music originally composed by Hans Zimmer (and to a lesser degree Klaus Badelt) from the previous films in the franchise. While this is understandable, in order to give the movie the same feeling, I can't help wondering why Disney didn't just remploy the services of Zimmer, or at least not rest too heavily on his previous music. The occasional nod to the themes once in a while is fine, but this is pretty much half comprised of old themes. Just as a track is starting to get interesting, along comes an old favourite...

Now, I'm not complaining (much) but I've already got those themes on the other albums and nothing much different is done with them here. In fact, if you were being super picky, you'd say that Zanelli doesn't have the skill to compose a strong score of his own, as he merely references themes from the past.

Now, that said, I did thoroughly enjoy this album, mainly because it felt like a collection of all of the best themes from the franchise (with a little twist from Zanelli in the process).

If you're expecting an album packed with new and exciting themes you're going to be very disappointed, but if you're a fan of what's been delivered in the past then you'll love this release. The album contains 18 tracks (1 hr, 15 min, 02 sec).

7

Darren Rea