Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you desire the texture and atmosphere of Paul Haslinger's somewhat harmonic, but still harshly metallic underscore instead of the film's more obvious song placements. Avoid it... if your world of werewolves and vampires rages with strictly heavy metal brutality and no keyboarded sentimentality will fit into that equation. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Underworld: (Paul Haslinger) You sometimes find cases in which a film is universally loved by audiences and universally bashed by critics, and Underworld is such an example. The fantasy topic was the directing debut of Len Wiseman, the respected art director of Stargate and Independence Day, and the one thing that everybody agreed on early is that Underworld has no shortage of beautiful sets. Audiences couldn't seem to get enough vampire films in their blood, and Underworld presents a nocturnal vampire vs. werewolves war that takes the biting genre into the world of slow-motion, logic-defying, Matrix-like action sequences (but how can these underground wars go on for centuries without the greater, normal public finding out about them by accident?). It is a visual stunner, as is the leather-clad Kate Beckinsale, who, with her cute accent, seemed like the last choice to be cast as the best vampire fighter of the kingdom. But who's to quibble with her casting when compared to seeing her shoot a hole through a floor with a couple of handguns? (MythBusters fans, insert comment here). So successful was this Matrix-gone-vampire scenario that Beckinsale immediately signed on for a sequel, which took three years in the making and, alas, the war between werewolves and vampires was destined rage on in both a sequel and prequel. Whatever you may think about the merits of the film, the choice of composer was consistent with the genre. Despite being classically trained in Salzburg and Vienna, composer Paul Haslinger has always been best known for his involvement as a member of the famed electronic band Tangerine Dream, and he scored several films with that group from the late 1980's onward. He served as an arranger and programmer for composer Graeme Revell in many of his most popular electronically-enhanced scores of the late 1990's, from Spawn to Tomb Raider, and was also the music producer for the extremely stylish Red Planet. Haslinger's first solo effort as a film composer came in 2000, and he had since scored the surfing film Blue Crush and written extra material for Minority Report that would end up in some of that film's trailers. His distinct musical textures and atmospheres were required for the murky settings of Underworld, and his work for the project would receive "sonic treatments" by industrial sound designer Brian Lustmord. You can easily tell that the makers of Underworld were hearing Matrix-inspired, techno-driven tunes in their head when they were drawing out the storyboards for this film. It is rich with senseless violence and sufficient bullets to demand a rhythmically intense score, and in the parts of the film where heavy metal songs weren't employed, Haslinger's score was inserted to maintain that same futuristic and industrial edge. That is not to say, though, that Haslinger's score is too intolerably heavy. As a matter of fact, this music contains a considerable amount of introverted material of lesser volume. Several cues offer light keyboarding and basic, harmonic progressions, never developing a memorable theme, but succeeding in the basic need to establish that there is potentially a love affair between a vampire and werewolf that could end the centuries-old war. More of this material comes to light as the film nears its somewhat sentimental conclusion, and the album finishes with a bonus track ("Keep Watch Over the Night") that is by far more melodic than anything in the previous score selections. The slowly descending motif in this cue is performed by a piano in its lowest ranges, skirting the boundary of the new age genre. The texture throughout the score is consistent, with a wet sound reverberating through clangs of metal and distant, deep droning. There aren't very many samples, and even fewer mutilations of those samples, and it wouldn't be too much of a dare to say that Haslinger holds a pretty conservative line there. Even the snippets of Beckinsale's exotically-whispered dialogue from the film are mixed in such a fashion that they do not really interrupt the music. Collectors of strictly orchestral scores won't find any classically inclined music here, but they could also be heartened by the lack of unrestrained electric guitar-ripping at every turn. Ironically, the most interesting moments of Haslinger's score are those in which he presents a hard-ass rhythm with an extremely tough conviction. The meaty rhythms in "Deathdealers Deploy," "Metamophosis," and "Fire Falling from the Sky" offer the true personality of the genre. Some of the sound effect samples in these cues are fresh enough to sustain individuality for Underworld, although they make you pause the music at a few points to make sure that the sound you're hearing really isn't a phone ringing in the room. Also to Haslinger's credit is the fact that the ambient design and sound effects never overwhelm you with dissonance, meaning that the heavy, rhythm-propelled portions of the score are generally cool to the ears. The effectiveness of these rhythms, and especially the percussively creative "Metamophosis," almost makes the surrounding conversational underscore sound mundane by comparison. For fans of the film and its inherent genre, the score for Underworld may not be as appealing as the song album, which featured either all-new songs written for the film or remixes of previously written favorites. The score album does have one other crucial element for Underworld fans; it features the bonus song "Red Tape" (by Agent Provocateur) that was heard in all of the film's trailers and television advertising. The sole recording of this piece available is on the score album, although its heavy metal genre perhaps fits better with the tone and mood of the song album. At any rate, Haslinger's score is as good as anyone could expect for the genre, and it plays remarkably well on album, even if it does suffer from a lack of serious thematic or emotional development. The franchise would turn to Marco Beltrami for Underworld Evolution in 2006, resulting in a more conventional orchestral and synthetic hybrid effort. The highlight of that film's soundtrack is ironically the love theme on piano from Haslinger's original entry ("Eternity and a Day"), but in a performance that was never released on any album in the form heard in context. That, like the creatures in the film, bites. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 52:20
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