Batman Beyond

Musically, the Caped Crusader has certainly come a long way from the days of "Na na na na na na na na ... BAT-man!" Some very distinguished composers have taken a crack at the mythical Dark Knight on the big screen, and a small pantheon of them have been there to back up his television adventures. We've seen "Batman: The Animated Series," "The New Batman/Superman Adventures," and now "Batman Beyond." The musical common ground for these shows is the indefatigable Shirley Walker and her team of composers, but with "Batman Beyond," the similarities certainly stop there.

Someone over at Kid's WB decided that we needed a newer, younger, hipper Batman, and with that came a younger, hipper score. What Walker and her team have done here is take an audacious 180-degree turn from the symphonic form of the previous series, taking on instead a Trent Reznor-ish '90s metal sound. The result is, at least to my ears, a fairly entertaining forty minutes to listen to while driving, running, working at the computer, or something like that—but certainly nothing I've found myself humming in my spare time.

Why's this? Well, of all the twenty tracks, they all tend to run together, and sound very much like little more than a collection of very short background cues. They're enjoyable, but nothing really stands out above the rest. There's no unifying theme to connect all of these disparate pieces. Also, I tend to find that in this age of post-grunge metal, this type of thing works quite a bit better with some sort of words to accompany it—it keeps all of the songs from sounding just like one another, at least to me.

So what's the most upsetting thing about this album? Namely, that it's not the much sought-after music from the original animated series, where motives for various characters were rampant, and balls-out brass was a rule of thumb. Those were some memorable scores—even as it remains unreleased, I find myself humming Walker's "Batman: The Animated Series" theme. So what of "Batman Beyond?" It's cool enough, but nothing to write home about. If you have to pick up some techno-death-metal on your next trip to the music store, I'd recommend first getting Nine Inch Nails' "The Fragile."