Martin O'Donnell And Michael Salvatori - Halo: Combat Evolved (Original Soundtrack) (2LP)

Halo’s music didn’t just set the tone for Bungie’s sci‑fi epic, it gave the series a spine. In June 2002, Sumthing Else Music Works issued Halo: Combat Evolved (Original Soundtrack), collecting Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s score into a listenable arc that still hits like a memory you can’t shake. The game had landed on Xbox the previous November, of course, but the album stands on its own. It feels carefully curated, with cues arranged into suites that mirror the sweep of a campaign, not just a dump of in‑game stems.

The famous opening is still a small miracle. Male voices enter with monk‑like chant, then toms and strings lift the room. Anyone who booted the game in a dim lounge remembers that first chill, but the recording here has a glow that rewards proper speakers. O’Donnell and Salvatori weren’t new to this kind of storytelling. They had already honed a cinematic style through Bungie’s Myth series, and you can hear that lineage in the way themes recur and evolve, almost like a film score tracking a character’s arc.

What sets this album apart is its balance of austerity and swagger. Take the Truth and Reconciliation Suite. It moves from stealthy pads and tight rhythmic figures into full‑bodied orchestral statements, then back to a hush. You can follow the shape of a mission without needing the controller in your hands. Then there’s Rock Anthem for Saving the World, the guitar‑driven adrenaline shot that basically taught a generation of players that first‑person shooters could strut. It could have dated badly, yet it still feels cheeky and huge, a release valve after the choral gravitas.

Under Cover of Night might be the stealth MVP. It threads delicate percussion and glassy synths through a nocturnal groove that carries more emotion than you’d expect from a level set on an alien ring. A Walk in the Woods keeps that reflective mood, all spacious reverb and patient melody, the kind of track that made people who didn’t care about games ask what album was on. Perilous Journey, by contrast, pushes hard with insistent strings and rolling drums, a reminder that this score always had weight behind the shine.

The production choices mattered. O’Donnell spoke often about blending live players with electronic textures, and you can hear those seams in a good way. The choir reads ancient, the percussion feels tactile, the synths paint in colours an orchestra alone couldn’t touch in 2001. It is an early template for the hybrid game score that would become standard later in the decade. Sumthing Else, the label founded by Nile Rodgers, helped bring that approach to a wider audience, and this release was one of the catalogue pillars that nudged game music into record collections next to film and TV scores.

Reception at the time backed that up. Critics routinely singled out the music as part of Halo’s impact, and the main theme quickly turned into a concert staple, from Video Games Live to symphonic programs that treated it like modern repertoire. That status feels earned when you sit with the album, beginning to end. The sequencing is smart, with long cues that breathe. You’re not skipping around for the hits, you’re living in the world again.

All of which makes Halo: Combat Evolved vinyl such a satisfying proposition. The dynamics love a turntable, and the contrast between chant, strings and that chunky guitar really opens up when you give it space. If you haunt a Melbourne record store you’ve probably seen a recent pressing on the wall and felt the pull. For collectors hunting Martin O’Donnell vinyl, or those who want to buy Martin O’Donnell records online without diving into later series spin‑offs, this is the bullseye. It also sits neatly next to other Martin O’Donnell albums on vinyl, since it captures the partnership with Michael Salvatori at the moment they rewired how blockbuster games could sound.

Two decades on, the album is more than nostalgia. It’s a document of craft, of melody first thinking, and of a team that knew how to write themes you could hum while waiting for the tram. If you grew up with a controller, it will flood you with images. If you didn’t, it still plays like a bold, moody, confident score that earns its place in any stack of vinyl records Australia can offer. And if you spot Halo: Combat Evolved (Original Soundtrack) in the wild, don’t overthink it. Pick it up, put it on, and let that first chant roll out across the room.