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While the outright aping of Carpenter and Fiedel in Morbius will stand out as the most obvious characteristic of the score, Ekstrand did attempt to branch out with applications of 1990's techno, joining sound effects like alarms at times and various library samples of bat noises that he mixed in for the story's associations. The latter really doesn't have much audible impact on the score, though the former definitely does. One of the alarm noises utilized as a rhythm is nearly identical to the red alert siren heard on Imperial starships in the Star Wars universe, highlighted here with heightened agitation at the end of "Birds of Prey." While film score collectors may not notice Nicholas Dodd's orchestral influence in Morbius to any great degree because of all the enhancements to the recording, the strings and brass are indeed present for much of the work. "Cerro de la Muerte" is arguably the most organic cue in its final presentation, but it's still highly manipulated. Don't expect to hear any particular player in that group shine, as the only prominent performances come from the exuberantly pounding percussion and some of the pitch-meandering effects. The score contains really underwhelming narrative development, basically servicing the emotional appeal of particular scenes but doing nothing to fully reveal a new superhero musically. The work has absolutely none of the empathetic appeal of a score like Marco Beltrami's Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a necessary element to contrast against the darker side of the characters. The structure of Ekstrand's music is unsatisfying throughout, with the composer adhering to the worst of the Zimmer methodology of supplying long, rhythmically noisy crescendos with no resolution at the ends of cues. In fact, this technique is abused so frequently in Morbius that listeners encounter such obnoxious crescendos in "Cerro de la Muerte," "Michael Wakes Up," "A Need for Blood," "Hospital Hunt," "Main Suspect," "Stairway Escape," "Milo Leaves," "Subway Fight," "Subway Flight," "Rooftop Flight," "Birds of Prey," "The Rise of Morbius," and "Morbius Flight." This is well more than half of the major cues in the score, and they yield critical redundancy that will alone sink the album experience for some listeners. When not building up to one of these headache-inducing moments, the composer achieves the same end by pounding incessantly on key in the bass region, a trick so fundamentally overused by this point in the action genre that it's amazing to imagine that it still stirs the loins of movie-goers.

Likewise, Ekstrand's handling of themes in Morbius is maddeningly incohesive, potentially leaving a huge portion of listeners with absolutely no lasting musical identity for the character. Most of the motific structures of the score seem tied to four-note phrasing, but those figures never follow expected patterns to denote meaningful associations. The main theme for Morbius himself is extremely scatterbrained, a minor third ascent from key, then down a note and back to the minor third. It's extremely simplistic for such a complex character, and it exudes absolutely no sense of duality. Introduced at 0:45 into "Dr. Michael Morbius," this theme closes "Michael Wakes Up" with evil intent and develops into a rhythmic formation with a higher fourth note in "A Need for Blood." It accelerates into rhythmic hysteria in the middle of "Superhuman" but shortens to the two-note Zimmer Batman Begins theme at 1:09 into "Main Suspect." Ekstrand struggles to keep the theme focused, allowing it instead to take a new form early in "Through the Wall," and this adaptation continues in the rhythms of "Subway Flight" and "Night Hunt," possibly as a representation of Morbius' brother. The four notes shift to Mortal Kombat-like progressions in "Michael Needs a Lab" before finally returning to original form at 0:35 into "House Search" with force. Sadly, though, the composer abandons it for no good reason in the action of "The Rise of Morbius" and only references the rhythmic alteration for the finale in "Morbius Flight." Equally elusive is Ekstrand's rare, softer material for character sadness, a longer identity vaguely descending after an initially hopeful progression. It opens "Orphanage," returns at 1:22 into that cue, stews in variants during the middle of "A Cure is Possible," and is hinted late in "Through the Wall." An even longer-lined version of this material is explored though most of "Rooftop Flight," struggles at 0:40 into "The Rise of Morbius," and is conveyed in fleeting reminders in "Morbius Flight." Outside of these ineffective moments, the score relies heavily upon the four-note figures in further manipulations. The most prominent of these is a descending chasing motif heard at the end of "A Need for Blood" along with a totally shameless reference to Fiedel's famed rhythm from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. An altered version of this motif extends to the middle of "Milo Leaves." But Morbius is not a thematically-driven score as a whole, its bleak industrial attitude and dissonant demeanor pounding you into submission by its sheer unpleasantness. The hour-long, score-only album is a trial of your tolerance for pain, its bland inelegance not original within either the superhero or vampire genres.  *   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 60:24