Milan Records releases music from the hugely popular anime franchise Fullmetal Alchemist for the first time ever outside of Japan. Available everywhere now are 11 original soundtracks, including music from both the original Fullmetal Alchemist television series and the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood series, as well as soundtracks from the franchise’s two feature-length films, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa and Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos...

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is an anime series that was uniformly critically praised, which is unsurprising to anyone that has seen it. It's a more faithful adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga series than 2003's Fullmetal Alchemist anime series.The American English language dub is also so good that it converted some hardcore purists (me included) to finally switch over and listen to the English dub rather than listen to the original soundtrack with English subtitles. Akira Senju's score is one of the show's highlights, with the composer really getting underneath the characters and situations to the point that the show just wouldn't work without it.

Milan Records finally release this 3-album collection for a western audience, although I admit that I caved in years ago and bought the original Japanese Aniplex release of all three CDs. It's still an album I play on a regular basis, to the point that I've created a playlist of highlights from all three albums... and to be fair it's not much shorter than the full albums.

As well as Senju's rich score, this album also includes the opening/closing title songs 'Again', 'Uso', 'Hologram' and 'Let it Out' as well as two tracks performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir.

There isn't a wasted minute on this release - 30 tracks (1 hr, 04 min, 11 sec). There's many beautiful melancholic themes, plenty of suspense music and a good smattering of sweet melodic reflective moments. In short it has everything and is well worth adding to your music library.

10

Darren Rea