What Alan Silverstri has brought to this series is certainly more traditional than Goldsmith's, and is perhaps less ethnic and more epic. This shift in influcence is apparent throughout the entire score to TMR, but this new score does indeed contain hints of Goldsmith's original, but still very little Egyptian-sounding music.

TMR is almost nonstop action throughout its entire 70 minutes of score time and its almost hard to believe just how enthusiastic the writing is. One would think with all of the booms, bangs, and wows in the music, that your interest would wander or at least pray for some softer music. Not so. All of the tons of action music here are so vehemently furious and just plain fun, that you almost want it to keep going after the CD is over. Almost. Yes, parts do get tedious, but the overall effect of the CD doesn't leave you feeling that way when all is said and done.

Silvestri has a reputation (which he completely deserves) of being a film score chameleon. He basically mimics the scores and styles of other composers with little influencial originality. Even for modern day. The Mummy Returns makes this apparent, but from my earlier mentioning of not following Goldsmith's lead, Silvestri tends to borrow ideas more from guys like David Arnold this time around.

The rock song at the end is insulting, as usual, to film score fans and probably isn't likely to sell many copies on its own merits, or lack thereof. The song is completely skippable, and I suggest that you do so.

Overall, this gets the same rating as its prequel score, but I still recommend it slightly more. Not only is it more fun, the dissonance which sometimes pops up does not interfere with the effectiveness of the music. The Mummy Returns is a great score, and more than worthy of a recommendation, even though there have been better scores released this year.