Stellar Blade Original Soundtrack Music Review
If you had told me a year ago that SHIFT UP’s Stellar Blade would be offering up one of 2024’s most compelling soundtracks, I might not have believed you. And yet, not only did the soundtrack intrigue me, the whole game did. Its futuristic, glossy aesthetic and story and setting that is exactly to my taste meant I ended up excited to get into this game and soundtrack respectively, to say nothing of the tight, fast, and punishing gameplay. It is hardly surprising that the OST bears some similarities to both NieR: Replicant‘s and NieR: Automata‘s because Oliver Good of MONACA (Keiichi Okabe’s studio) is one of its several composers. The game itself absolutely draws inspiration from Automata, so I’m curious how far this inspiration extends in the soundtrack—is it too much of a rip-off, or does it use these nods to Automata as a springboard to build its own musical identity?
Listening to Stellar Blade’s OST is no small endeavour, with its 189 tracks totaling over ten hours of music. I imagine many listeners are curious about the game’s vocal tracks, so let’s start by looking at some of these across the soundtrack. “Shelter (Title)” is the first (track two) and anyone familiar with the NieR series will instantly recognise the vocal style on this track: ethereal, breathy, and sung in a mix of real-world and fictional languages. Vocals on the aforementioned piece appear sparingly, purely as an introduction to the much longer, sparse instrumental music that follows.
“Star Descent,” by Oliver Good and Keita Inoue, is the first song to include vocals throughout that perfectly suit the over-the-top production behind it. The range displayed here is rather astounding. You have sections highlighting the beat and electronics taking inspiration from dubstep music, soaring strings, chanting, and changes in pitch and tempo. It’s hard to find a fault here. “Silent Street” by Hyunmin Cho, seibin, and MonoTree is one of the most iconic vocal pieces on the soundtrack. As soon as I heard it, I was taken back to memories of the early game and recognised this as one of my highlights. Cho and MonoTree also give us a big emotional pop moment with English lyrics toward the end of the soundtrack with “Everglow.” “Flooded Commercial Sector” was also featured on the previously released mini-soundtrack and remains one of my favourite tracks. Its longer length allows Good the chance to fully flex his production muscles and display restraint and indulgence in equal measure during the track’s five-minute run time.
The vocals are not solely female on this OST, either. Keita Inoue’s “Stalker” switches things up by putting a male singer front and centre, but also in the overall sound by breaking from the abundant electronic/dance sonic landscape and giving us some brilliantly urgent hard rock. For a slower, acoustic track see “Oasis,” featuring the vocalist ZOZNO making his only appearance on this soundtrack with a smooth, primarily guitar and piano affair. On “Fallen Angel,” we get a unison of both female and male choral vocals, which is perfectly apt for a song of that title.
“Prologue” is the first piece on the OST that shows the game forging its own clear identity with its music. Though it uses a choral chant, a common element to many sci-fi/fantasy action RPG soundtracks, it’s layered with a pulsing dance beat and some amazing fuzzy synth sounds as if it belongs in a game like Armored Core VI. The balance between electronic and more organic sounds is fantastic and a feature that continues through the soundtrack; it fits thematically with the game itself. “Underground Passage,” a rare appearance from composer Muwen, sounds like it could be by The Prodigy and blends straight-up rave music with elements of rock in one of the most intense sub-two-minute tracks I’ve ever heard. “Raven,” a bonkers Oliver Good creation, sounds like one of the most unhinged K-pop tracks you’ve ever heard. Instances like these show the composers pushing this OST in new and exciting directions, drawing on familiar genres to add something recognisable and grounding in the game’s ruined and unrecognisable world.
“Ambush” is a great example of how some pieces switch moods dramatically, starting in one place and ending in another. Seibin clashes full-on EDM and trance-inspired sections with more melancholic ones simply by changing the synth types used. “D1g-g2r,” another seibin track, has a cool chunky baseline underpinning shifts between funk- and citypop-inspired melodies. The three “Wasteland (Reboot)” pieces are all remixes of a sort: versions of the same track with changed vocals and mood. They’re all interesting to hear, especially back to back so you can hear and compare them.
Stellar Blade isn’t wall-to-wall bangers either. There are some sumptuous examples of ambient music here too. “Parking Tower (Battle)” is an unexpected highlight—a chill, mid-tempo battle theme is a surprising and welcome choice. This is a common trait among the battle versions of field themes, with “Memory Tower’ and “Research Lab” as other particularly good examples. “Collapsed Rail Bridge (Battle)” takes some inspiration from 90’s-00’s era trip-hop, “Hyperdrive” is fantastically atmospheric, and “May your memories live on, Forever” is beautifully mournful and sombre—great examples of how this game’s music takes emotional turns and exploring a variety of moods and genres at will.
While much of Stellar Blade’s soundtrack feels like a breakaway from the norm, it does occasionally lean into a more obvious RPG sound. Tracks like “Gigas” by Hyunmin Cho wouldn’t sound too out of place in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, and “Look Out!” goes for a traditional and fun JRPG “run from the boss like your life depends on it” composition. More orchestral tracks like “Nest” and “Key to the Future” (with swelling strings, piano, and traditional East Asian instruments in some cases) are not only a welcome break from all the electronics but are also enjoyable in their own right. The prevalence of this type of track increases toward the end of the OST.
An aspect of the Stellar Blade OST I appreciate is the abundance of sub-four-minute tracks. I find that video game music can occasionally struggle with longer pieces that don’t work as well out of context/gameplay. That isn’t a problem here. Maybe it’s because Stellar Blade is action-focused with RPG elements, so faster, shorter pieces of music generally suit it. Despite the shorter track lengths, most compositions still manage to include a variety of sounds, sections, and switch-ups mid-song, keeping them feeling fresh and unexpected. “Alpha Naytiba” by Hyunmin Cho shows this—what starts out as quite peaceful and serene becomes tense and sinister at the midway point. “Pathway to Atelier,” also by Cho, is a propulsive track that mixes a fast beat with subtle breathy vocals and strings to bring about bursts of internal euphoria when they combine, all in two minutes, eight seconds.
I would be hard-pressed to find a ten-hour-long body of music that doesn’t have some low points, and indeed, there are some. “Abaddon” by ko.yo is admirable in what it tries to achieve—clashing a massive range of electronics, beats, and vocals together along with electric guitar, but it doesn’t quite work for me. The vocals don’t sit well with the rest of the track and get deeply lost in the mix. “Lily,” one of the more vocal-heavy tracks, sounds a bit too alt-pop and out of place. The vocals sound rather weak, occasionally off-pitch, and the whole piece just lacks punch. The “Fishing” track constantly sounds like it is building toward something that never materialises and doesn’t go anywhere during its nearly three-minute length. Lastly, “Logistics Line” tries to mesh together too many disparate elements and genres and leaves the track sounding messy.
As if this soundtrack wasn’t referencing enough genres—how about some smooth jazz? Well, we have that here too! “Roxanne,” “Gwen Hair Salon,” and ‘The Warmth of the City” give Persona vibes, and while not my favourite cuts from this OST, do provide a nice change of pace and instrumentation. If jazz isn’t to your taste, maybe some noughties pop instead. Try “Craft Something,” a fun and bubbly bop featuring a looped vocal. “Demogorgon” has many deep layers that unite wonderfully and often cacophonously to create something that sounds full of danger and suspense. Or maybe you’d like something with a salsa beat? Check out “The Song of the Traveller.” There really is something for everyone here.
Stellar Blade‘s music draws on so many genres: electronic, industrial, ambient, EDM, and rock to name just a few, as well as an easily recognisable inspiration from RPG music. This very modern pop sensibility sets Stellar Blade’s OST very much apart from NieR: Automata’s and keeps it interesting and engaging for the ten-hour duration. I honestly feel the comparison to Automata ends at some similarity in the vocal tracks. Delving into this OST as a whole collaborative work, its uniqueness has very much come to the fore. While music is obviously subjective, Stellar Blade’s style is very much my taste, as are many of the genres it experiments with. For this reason, it delivers one of the best original soundtracks I’ve heard in recent years.
