N75
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As someone who isn’t big on Dread’s music either, you can’t really call something a straw man and then bring up the fact that the composers being recent hires as a possible reason as to why it was bad, especially since Hamano was in the same boat with Super Metroid.Normally, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but the composers for Dread had a very poor grasp on what Metroid is "supposed to" sound like. In light of that, I can't help but feel at least somewhat apprehensive. If you look up Soshi Abe and Sayako Doi (the pair that worked on Dread), they have very sparse composer's credits, with the latter only having joined Nintendo in 2019.
Now, I'm not saying you can't give new blood a chance, because obviously Yamamoto or Hamano aren't always going to be around to do the OST for every single new Metroid game, but it's a bit of a shame that Abe and Doi in particular clearly weren't the right fit for the series. It's not because Dread went for "ambient", either, despite that being the common, straw man rhetoric people (usually fans of Dread's OST) generally like to employ. There are, in actuality, many ambient, or atmospheric tracks across the whole of the Metroid series, and they don't sound anything like Dread's glorified, royalty-free hotel elevator music. Rather, they're of a much higher quality, and far more memorable, to boot.
Direction can influence music dramatically. I’m not trying to say Yamamoto is bad now or anything because that would be dumb, but I’ve also seen people say that his invovlement with Samus Returns and Dread was minimal as an excuse and that he’s too busy with Prime 4, which I don’t think is true. Sushi Striker is the only game he’s been involved with in between SR and Dread, and that was only for sound support.
Also, I doubt that either Abe or Doi are working on Prime 4, at least in a major capacity. They’ve been credited in other games recently like Brain Training, New Horizons, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, and Big Brain Academy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Matsuoka again, as he’s worked under Yamamoto several times. He did work on Bowser’s Fury, but that’s a 3 year gap for essentially a side mode in an exisiting game.