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For over a decade, composer Akira Yamaoka’s work with the Silent Hill series has been considered one of the most spectacular collaborations in the video game industry. The first “Silent Hill”, released for PSX in 1999, radically changed the role of game music – rather than simply serving as a background element, it became an integral part of the player experience. Yamaoka created an innovative spectrum of sounds to accompany the game’s action, and both music and game worked symbiotically to create Silent Hill’s characteristic sepulchral horror mood. On subsequent Silent Hill releases, Yamaoka’s musical genius continued to impress gamers. By combining a vast array of musical genres (including dark ambient, industrial, trip-hop, rock, metal, and a variety of electronic styles) with a number of experimental elements, the composer has created a sequence of memorable soundtracks that encapsulate the series’ uncanny atmosphere of anxiety and constant tension. But unexpectedly, with the release of Shattered Memories, the newest Silent Hill installment, this era has come to a close.

It’s worthy to note that Silent Hill is not a Japanese production these days. In 2007, the series was taken over by American developers, who have produced Silent Hill: Origins (2007), Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008), and the newest release. Before this shift, the Silent Hill franchise was created by Team Silent, a Japanese development team, and Yamaoka played an integral part in supervising and guiding the project. While Yamaoka scored the American-produced games, he had little creative input in the development process. Consequently, the soundtracks for these recent titles suffered; these recent works are not nearly as attuned with their respective games. Regardless, the composer has continued to release interesting (if not nearly as groundbreaking or experimental) music for Silent Hill, and fans have continued to anticipate new releases.

When plans for Silent Hill - Shattered Memories were announced (the game is a loose remake of the classic Silent Hill 1, and is developed for the Nintendo Wii), Yamaoka was hired to compose the soundtrack, as usual. Soon after completing the task, however, the composer announced that he was leaving Konami. And thus, Shattered Memories OST has turned out to be his final creation, and can be viewed as a summary of his musical contributions to the famed SH saga.

Problematically, the Shattered Memories album is still not officially available. It was included as a bonus to game preorders in the American region, but has not been released as a standalone disc. Hopefully, this will change in the near future. The album features a few brand new pieces, as well as newly-arranged fragments of tracks from the early Silent Hill installments. However, fans that praise the first three soundtracks may not be entirely satisfied with Yamaoka’s goodbye material. Unlike the original arrangements, these new pieces are not scary. Rather, the OST underlines the wintery aura which dominates the world in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The reason is simple: in this alternate version, Silent Hill is no longer covered in blood – now the city is blanketed with ice.

The track “Ice” is characteristic of these wintery pieces; it illustrates the stiff icy world with piercing vocals and choral background voices. “Snow Driven,” combining percussion and synthesizer sounds, builds the vibe of loneliness in the wintery environment, while the drowsy keyboard in “Hibernation” expresses the feeling of winter lethargy. In this way, Shattered Memories is a big change of pace - never before has Silent Hill’s music been so focused on playing the role of a musical backdrop. This background music, however, is livened by a diverse array of instruments, many used by Yamaoka for the first time ever.