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Just in time for Halloween, Slither
arrives on DVD and the score album hits the music stores at the same time.
There's a song CD also, but right now we are only interested to share some
thoughts about Tyler Bates' music. The film follows the same trend of, for
example, Eight Legged Freaks, paying homages to such sci-fi/horror
classics like Invasion of The Body Snatchers and The Blob. In
short, Slither can be defined as a fun, sometimes scary and many
times overblown horror comedy.
Tyler Bates was hired to compose the score, defined by director James Gunn as,
"Bernard Hermann put through a punk rock/John Zorn meat grinder, and then
lovingly reassembled without any irony whatsoever." Previously Bates
delivered two solid efforts in the horror genre, Zack Snyder's Dawn of
The Dead and Rob Zombie's The Devils Rejects. For Zombie's film
the composer created a sometimes difficult but very original work, plenty of exquisite
dissonance, sounds and scary chords. For Slither Bates had to keep
the score
faithful to the genre's formula, so this music is not so original or
creative. The score had to translate the movie's heart attack-inducing scares
and laugh-out-loud
humor into music with emotional depth and complexity
- as far its possible.
The B-movies used as references for Slither are memorable, but not
exactly for their music. This fact was an obstacle for Bates, since the
audiences would be also expecting to hear some genre references in the
soundtrack. Bate's solution was simple - to emulate more recent works from
composers like Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and even
Elliot Goldenthal. So,
if you appreciate the music from films like Aliens or Predator
(yes, the introduction of the famous
Alan Silvestri's theme gets a nice
rendition in the track "Russkies"), for sure you will enjoy this work.
But it is a mistake to think that the quality of Bates music only depends
upon the work of other composers. It is the engine that moves forward Slither,
enhancing the film's pulsing flow of blood and
irony. Despite to be mostly overblown, like the film that serves, the score
sucessfully expresses the characters individual qualities. The
quiet moments are rare, like the evocative strings based "Love Theme from
Slither" (and even this one ends with orchestral bursts). Bates employed an orchestra of 105 musicians,
to assure that the performance would deliver to the audiences a classic roller coaster
ride. What the Slither soundtrack loses in originality, it gains in
fun and thrills. To be honest, how could a score assembled of tracks with
names like "Alien Rape", "What's that Smell" and "Blood Vomit" not to be fun?
In addition to Slither, Bates recently completed his score for Zack Snyder's battle epic
300, based
on the award-winning graphic novel by Frank Miller, to be released in USA theaters
March 9th, 2007. Soon he will begin scoring Rob Zombie's
animated The Haunted World of El Super Beasto, as well as Resident
Evil: Extinction, the third chapter of the series based in the famous
Capcom's game franchise. As you see, thanks to his competent works Tyler
Bates is a very busy guy today, in such a way that very soon his name will
be recognized even by casual audiences. |
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