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Any number of composers could competently replace Poledouris, who died of cancer in 2006, in the "Conan" franchise. Tyler Bates certainly wasn't the first name to come to mind, but the way Hollywood works these days, his involvement in the 2011 reboot shouldn't come as a surprise. This despite the fact that he wrote a score for 300 in 2007 that remains the most reported and acknowledged case of plagiarism in the digital age of film music. His most widely recognized assignments since have not been greeted with much enthusiasm from film score collectors. Despite his high profile scores, Bates remains best categorized as a sound designer and music producer, both emphases that can be heard in his rather nondescript music for the blockbuster scene. For Conan the Barbarian, he was under huge time constraints, so the mass majority of his cues were co-written with two assistant composers. Also, he had the misfortune of competing with Poledouris whether he tried to or not. Certainly, there was the option to emulate or incorporate the classic, a technique chosen with surprisingly good results for John Ottman's Superman Returns. Bates respectfully admits, however, to taking a completely different path, tackling Conan the Barbarian with a sound that will likely horrify any enthusiast of the Poledouris original. His approach yields massively symphonic, choral, and electronic sound design, an array of noisy rhythmic explosions and atmospheric interludes that lose all of the appealing characteristics embodied by the earlier score. He reminds of those parents who give their children all the best art supplies in the world, believing falsely that these tools will help develop those children into the world's next famous artists. In this case, Bates has been given all the musical toys one could imagine for such an assignment: symphony (albeit a small one), choir, a bevy of exotic instruments, worldly male and female vocals, and synthetic elements that boost the limited players and include an electric guitar. But does he make art? Absolutely not. Bates' score is exactly what you'd expect to hear from a sound designer. He has seemingly set out to devise ways to service the film and impress listeners by concentrating on the texture of his instrumental layers rather than the underlying foundation of the entire structure. His themes are weak, their use to form a narrative is barely adequate, and all of the romanticism applied by Poledouris through melodic force has been replaced by useless dissonant crescendos, heaps of cliches layered on top of each other, and completely anonymous rhythmic slashing and pounding for the action sequences.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Bates and his assistant composers' work for Conan the Barbarian is how he wasted his vast instrumental palette for the recording. With so many interesting textures heard throughout the score, it's confounding to contemplate how poorly they are assembled to create the nonexistent narrative. A rather dry mix brings all of these elements to the forefront, and the flat ambient sound of the entire score causes it to lose whatever majesty it might have had as a composition. Extremely aggressive, chopping strings are a tired continuation of current blockbuster scoring tactics, as is the senseless application of lamenting female (and male, in this case) vocals. Electric guitars offer muscularity in a supporting role, heard prominently in "Freeing Slaves" and "Outpost" (and reminiscent of Christopher Lennertz's parody score for Meet the Spartans).Wailing trombones descend like passing truck horns and dissonant crescendos from the full ensemble and choir rise obnoxiously to close out multiple cues. What interesting elements can be heard, such as a cimbalom seemingly for the religious aspect of the story, are underplayed. Thematically, Bates explores two main ideas but never remains loyal enough to them to form any cohesive arc. There's the obligatory and simplistic hero's theme, of course, but its performances in the middle of "His Name is Conan" and ends of "12 Years Later" and "Conan Returns Home" reveal the theme to be hokey pampering, lacking genuine resonance to represent the character. More palatable is the softer identity for the character and his heritage. Opening "His Name is Conan" and "Egg Race," this idea extends to a pretty statement in the middle of "Fire and Ice," a momentous but short point of interest in "Victory," and a subdued reference near the end of "Conan Returns Home," This secondary theme produces the score's most attractive harmonic moments, but the theme isn't typically followed long enough for any truly satisfying experiences on album. As for secondary motifs, Bates generates a series of four-note motifs for the villain ("Zym's Demise") and meanders through aimless tonal strings to basically provide a love theme ("The Kiss"). None of these ideas is stated with any great length, and their usage is so infrequent that you may not recall them after the score has concluded. The secondary motifs are especially weak; many listeners, in fact, may not even notice them. With weak themes, Bates' attempts to weave their progressions into various situations outside of their obvious statements prove useless.

Whereas the few performances of Conan's softer theme in the score yield about two minutes of highlights ("Victory" is likely the only entire cue worth appreciating, in part because it's only half a minute long), there's a long list of moments in Conan the Barbarian that should be avoided. After what little narrative flow from the scenes involving Conan's youth dissolves as the adult character begins his life as a destructor, Bates loses all focus and manages to stun with several ear-piercing cues in the midst of his battle material. In three cues in a row, he perhaps exposes his inspiration, too. A rhythmic sequence late in "Monastery Approach" will annoy James Newton Howard enthusiasts. Likewise, the string phrases late in "Off With Their Heads" seems like a very poor emulation of Poledouris' famous "Riders of Doom" music from the original Conan the Barbarian. A pounded series of action motifs in "Horse Chase" stinks of Hans Zimmer's staccato inelegance from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Thereafter, however, Bates' score truly goes down the toilet, the sequences from "Death of a Priest" to "Outpost" and "Oceans of Blood" to "Wheel of Torture" featuring endless slashing and pounding of completely mindless and incoherent action material. Even the tonal respites from these noisy messes, such as "Fever," are vague in their direction. Specific moments in "The Dweller" and "Skull Mountain" need to be singled out for their insufferable nature. The former contains terrible violin figures randomly shrieking and tearing away at your sanity, and the latter unsettles with a combination of stereotypical Middle Eastern female voice and metallic synthesizer tones that will test your tolerance. Overall, Bates' take on Conan the Barbarian disappointingly reaffirms why expectations for this score were so low. His odds of success, in part because of post-production circumstances, were impossible. But this music goes beyond just the debate about the Zimmer/Remote Control methodology of blockbuster scoring, sinking below such mainstream muck by replacing the occasional guilty pleasure appeal with a greater emphasis on unlistenable sound design. The album presentation is extremely laborious, running over seventy minutes in length and nearly impossible to sit through during the abrasive action sequences in its latter half. Additionally, many of the tracks on that product seem to be condensed versions of larger cues, several painful fades in and out (especially the unnatural edits at the very start of multiple tracks) another annoying aspect of an already obnoxious listening experience. Film score collectors, don't waste your time with this trash. And to you, Basil Poledouris, rest in peace... if that's possible.  *   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Tyler Bates reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.11 (in 9 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.47 (in 4,717 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 70:42