For sheer over-the-topness, this soundtrack takes the cake in 2007: You'd be hard-pressed to find a more bombastic piece of music than "Beowulf Main Title"… until you reach, oh, "What We Need is a Hero," for instance, or "I Did Not Win the Race," or "Beowulf Slays the Beast." Pounding, relentless, swaggering, Alan Silvestri's score explodes out of the speakers, all crashing tympani and supersized choirs. Fittingly for the tale of a battle between a mighty warrior and a rampaging monster, this is movie music on a goofily epic scale--halfway betweenCarmina Buranaand Rammstein. Three songs interrupt the demented flow (although "raging torrent" would be a better word than "flow"). Actress Robin Wright Penn performs "Gently as She Goes" and "A Hero Comes Home," two ballads in soothing, medieval-type arrangements. Idina Menzel (Wicked) reprises a different version of "A Hero Comes Home" at the very end: Good thing she's a belter, because a meeker interpreter would have vanished under the catchy power-ballad arrangements.--Elisabeth Vincentelli