Sebastian Bach, wearing sunglasses indoors, punches the air as he hits the high notes in a vocal booth (location undisclosed). Plastic robots, held in hands, rub up against each other combatively. Brittney Slayes hams up each line of the Transformers theme, half-smiling as she warns you of galactic danger, turning her eyes to the sky. A planet-sized robot’s severed head bounces along to a karaoke video featuring clips of the 1986 film.

YouTube’s a weird place right now, and the 40th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie (1986) (yeah, the animated one) is why. 40 years for TT:TM is cinematic history, of a sort, but it’s also a fine reason for a party. Gen-X nostalgia is a powerful, or at least marketable, thing, and Hasbro would like to help celebrate whatever you remember of that film. If anything. And record label Reigning Phoenix Music, and their “Knights of Unicron”, would like to help celebrate its soundtrack. If you remember that. Which I understand might be a long shot.

That Transformers soundtrack (The Transformers: The Movie (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)) is beloved by fans, but it’s a quirky artifact of its time. The rock-tune selections are by largely forgotten studio guys, who indulge in that decade’s worst excesses: squealing guitars and rapid-fire synth arpeggios, with very little in the way of danger, dynamics, or hooks. There are a couple of pop-structured instrumental selections from the score (by Grammy-nominated composer Vince DiCola, who did pioneering work with sequencers for his scores, including one for Rocky IV). Those work well, if they don’t come together as a piece with the rock songs. The outlier, as always, is “Weird Al” Yankovic, who contributes “Dare to Be Stupid”, from his debut album (of the previous year).

A music writer at the time suggested that the rock-oriented Transformers soundtrack was there to appeal to slightly older kids than the toy-TV-show itself could attract. That record was likely snapped up by many undiscriminating, impressionable toy fans and consumed uncritically — an introduction to the worlds of hard rock, glam, synths, and metal. The Transformers franchise was of course more about marketing than artistic vision, but even by its own grossly capitalistic standards, The Transformers: The Movie (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) was weird. I’m sure it charmed those schoolboys, but it doesn’t exactly come together to modern ears.

Knights of Unicron are Matt Harvey, Gus Rios and Ross Sewage. Harvey and Sewage are from (San Jose death metal band) Exhumed, and Rios is a multi-instrumentalist in that same genre. They played together as “Cold Slither”, the G.I.-Joe-universe band that Cobra Command used to corrupt children. I don’t really want to get into it, but Cold Slither is a fictional band, both in the G.I. Joe universe and the one you live in (the WeHeartMusic universe). Hasbro recruited these musicians to “realize” that 40-year-old syndicated-TV vision for a full album (and a live performance at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con). Re-recording the Transformers soundtrack is a silly idea, but these guys made licensing nostalgia magic happen once, and they’re back to do it again.

Across the board, The Transformers: The Movie: The Soundtrack: The Reformatted Edition sounds more fully realized. The Knights have the benefit of four decades’ better tech, but they use it to open up a sonic palette: synths are fuller, bass is louder, drums are clearer. Everything is wide-screen and full-color: lush. Their covers of DiCola’s instrumental pieces kick things up a notch, with better-sounding winds, brass, and strings. DiCola himself is credited with the new “Death of Optimus Prime”, and that’s even better: a 4K HDR upgrade, with subtlety and nuance missing from the 1986 original. Stan Bush gets a second swing at his songs: “Touch” and “Dare”. “Touch” is still a little goofy (with Bush, now past 70, still going for something over the top of over-the-top), but “Dare” is far improved here, with 1986’s cheap-sounding synth-based pseudo-rock drive replaced by the real thing.

But the marketing appeal is in the gallery of guest appearances. That’s Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), Mark Osegueda (Death Angel), Francesco Cavalieri (Wind Rose), and Brittney Slayes (Unleash the Archers). Cavalieri turns “Instruments of Destruction” up a notch, adding intensity, while Osegueda is honestly maybe too good for this project, somehow bringing real emotion and investment to “Hunger”. Slayes does seem to be having a great time, and her deeper, fiercer voice is a clear improvement over the original 1986 theme, as the sonic landscape goes a touch darker. Bach, usually reliable on the “personality” front, seems to be dialing it back a bit on “Nothin’s Gonna Stand in Our Way”, which is welcome on a team project like this.

“Dare to Be Stupid” has vocals from Torch — from Cold Slither. From G.I. Joe. From last year’s thing. You know, three paragraphs ago. Ross-Sublett-as-Ross-Sewage-playing-Torch-from-Cold-Slither-performing-“Weird-Al”-Yankovic-parodying-DEVO is enough layers that it feels like Charlie Kaufman should be involved. Ultimately, all of those masks collapse, and “Dare to Be Stupid” finally sounds like it belongs with the rest of these songs, which is an artistic triumph all its own. (But a victory, perhaps, for Cobra?)

This sort of thing really does hinge, critically, on what sort of memory you have of the source material, and how willing you are to revisit that time. Better than a remaster, The Transformers: The Movie: The Soundtrack: The Reformatted Edition is a high-fidelity tribute, lovingly updated and upgraded. More importantly, it finally sounds like an album — and fans of any age can appreciate that.