4.0 out of 5 based on 1 reviews. – Customer review on 23/08/2006

This ambitious mass has become very popular probably owing to the "film music technique" of composition more than anything else - for example the end of the track "Charge!" has screams, followed by silence, rain and the mournful tones of "The Last Post". Other film gimmicks of this type abound (unsurprisingly, as Karl Jenkins has written the music for commercials, TV programmes and films). The mass features texts in different languages including a muezzin call to prayer and explores a range of contexts of war - propaganda and Hiroshima amongst them. Although in my opinion occasionally harmonically and melodically naive (text setting has a surprisingly scarce amount of melisma) this is a powerful and at some times harrowing work (due to the subject material and it's treatment) that truly and effectively exposes war what it really is - and what's wrong with popularising that.