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The original “Iron Blue Intention” strikes me as a very divided composition. I’d pin the issue on a main line that’s remarkably fragile, rendered by a delicate synth reminiscent of a harpsichord - an instrument never really meant to hold the center of an orchestral composition, particularly those as frenetic and momentum-driven as Castlevania’s. It never really establishes itself; the intro goes up and up without forming a complete musical idea - certainly not before that backbeat kicks in, which has an unusual rhythm, is out of step with (and sometimes louder than) the other half of the piece, and threatens to usurp the main line’s proper dominance. The “harpsichord” does gather steam, and its urgency is an intriguing counterpoint to its elegance, but it gets out of breath, so to speak, as the composition winds up/down, sounding like my grandmother’s old hatchback going into 4th gear up a hill at the end. “Iron Blue Intention” has an insidious charm to it, but it certainly seems odd in its initial milieu in Bloodlines, an old German munitions factory made of I-beams and chainlink, and it’s hard to believe it was originally intended as a character theme - character themes by definition are meant to signal a strong, distinctive presence, and “Intention” doesn’t communicate a single, unified idea.
The Judgment remix deals with that problem by a simple solution: everything in the composition is in full force behind the main melody. Only a few very soft notes in the recesses of the music remain of the backbeat. The instrumentation is a complete about-face into strident brass and drums. The result is a tonal 180; while the original is creeping, decrepit, this version of “Intention” is outright martial. Though its underlying concept is simple, it’s a strange arrangement for being so at odds with the source material (and, indeed, outright chops out one-half of it). It’s an intriguing example, though, of how sometimes going in the completely opposite direction with a problem piece can bring out its strengths. The assertiveness of the brass gives the intro an impressive nimbleness, while its self-confidence takes over for the harpsichord in lending “Intention” an aristocratic air. And there’s a fierce momentum to the piece now; once it gets to the hatchback part, it has enough steam to sound like the culmination of a frenzy, of a hard-fought military campaign, rather than a show of weakness. It’s a joy to hear - the joy of a sound composition allowed to bust free and reach its full potential.
By the way, I’ve never understood how Eric’s Judgment costume has come to be considered that game’s ultimate insult (instead of, say, poor Grant’s). If you’ve been a valkyrie and a cowboy, then Blue Boy (or Largely Charcoal Boy) really isn’t much of a stretch.
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