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The resulting score in Constantine is, as you'd expect, rather unbalanced. Tyler's effort could conceivably be considered too conservative and predictable in its similarity to John Debney's End of Days. Both works explore the demon worlds with bass-heavy orchestral and choral moodiness and rare interludes of thematic beauty on a small scale to represent the one's battle against the evil masses. Roughly half of Tyler's material does dwell upon the eerie atmosphere of the film, with extended cues of disjointed thematic and key-defying contemplation. If you accept the film as existing in either the horrific action or biblical conversation modes, then you can expect Tyler's score to kick it into gear at any time and explode from that atmospheric tone into striking ruckus with no warning. And that he does, with several cues of heart-pounding, thunderous orchestral bombast. On the score's album presentation, the first third of the cues largely rumble and tease, with Tyler's truly interesting work finally revealing itself in "I Left Her Alone" and the several cues that follow in the middle portions of that product. A basic main theme is heard in "Destiny," "Counterweight," and "Circle of Hell," offering the bass strings a simple progression with which to stew. More intriguing thematic development occurs in the aforementioned "I Left Her Alone" and "Humanity," with the composer giving some hope of redemption to the title character in his eloquent and yearning piano and string piece, "John." These six minutes represent some of Tyler's most authentic career character development, abandoning the all-too-friendly and contemporary progressions of Children of Dune and Paparazzi. The application of a duduk to some of these sequences (and "Humanity" in particular) gives the score a worldly tone that also suits an ancient religious battle well. While the restrained but beautiful interludes into sensitivity seem unlikely after the early portions of the score, it is their heartening presence that will either create more interest for you in the whole or perhaps too greatly exaggerate the difference between the best of Tyler's work and Badelt's less pleasantly-influenced cues. On the action front, however, Tyler really does impress with two lofty cues in particular; in "Circle of Hell" and "Flight to Ravenscar," he references a technique from Debney's End of Days in which a pounding bass drum or timpani blasts a rhythm at a slowly accelerating pace with the weight of the full ensemble above that propulsion. It's certainly an effective method of building to a crescendo in this, the ultimate of Hell-fearing environments.

When it came time to rework some of Tyler's music for Constantine, the mass of his best material was luckily retained. Some fans may raise flippant remarks about the tables being turned on Tyler after he replaced Jerry Goldsmith on what would have been the composer's final solo score, but the situation is significantly different here. When Badelt arrived with the "license to electrify," he largely maintained the thematic and rhythmic structure of Tyler's work. Thus, you hear Badelt's predictable style of music typically placed directly over background orchestral material that sounds, if you attempt to ignore the electronics, as though it was originally (and logically) very consistent in instrumentation with the rest of Tyler's work. The only highlight of Badelt's contribution to Constantine is arguably some of the placement of the standard Media Ventures electric cello, an instrument that raises memories of The Replacement Killers in the way that it sort of meanders at its higher ranges in the background, but also one that strangely mirrors Tyler's duduk in suiting the film's topic well. Given that the movie depicts a battle between God and Satan, it may have made sense to have an orchestral score led by a gorgeous piano for the title character fight the evil forces of synthesized distortion directly within the music itself. In the final third of the album, Badelt's influence does, however, cross over into the realm of the obnoxious. After serving in an auxiliary role in "Meet John Constantine," "Last Rites," and "Hell Freeway," the layers of muck from Badelt and his team do become outrageously unnecessary. The screeching "Ether Surfing" cue is only surpassed in its capability to annoy by the "End Titles," in which Badelt's presence seemingly handed over the scoring duties to a high school garage band. On the whole, the album begins slowly, mesmerizes you in its middle sections, and then ends horribly. While Badelt's involvement may very well have improved the pop appeal within the context of the film, it causes significant detriment to the album experience. Tyler's work alone, which included a very impressive opening title sequence before being cut entirely from the film, would likely be an impressive listening experience, and some fans have availed themselves of this material in bootleg form. But along with the Badelt infiltration of juxtaposed style comes an inconsistency in gain control on the commercial album that causes a cue such as "John" to potentially be lost. Overall, Tyler's music is nothing earth-shattering, but it's certainly intriguingly satisfying and would have translated much better onto album without the additions of Badelt's rather cheapening contemporary influences.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2 (in 41 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.13 (in 19,758 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 51:42