In terms of mood (both martial and eerie) and structure (the score is divided into 10 suites), there's no major departure from the previous installments in the Halo series here. The biggest difference is that this time, composers Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori seemed to have had a bigger budget and were able to hire a large orchestra. Where the synthetic feel of the previous two CDs sometimes made them feel a little thin and cheap, Halo 3 has the means to match its ambitions: This music would not shame a big-budget Hollywood sci-fi/action movie. Tracks such as "To Kill a Demon" and "This Is the Hour" (both of which, typically, recycle the composers' own themes) illustrate well this expanded sonic palette. The second CD ends with a hidden track ("Love Your Friends") by a band called Princeton, a fairly run-of-the-mill pop-punk effort which won a competition to be included on the soundtrack and which feels jarring compared to the rest of the music here. --Elisabeth Vincentelli