Imagine the scope of Basil Poledouris'
Conan the
Barbarian accompanied by a handful of ancient instruments primed and
ready for
The Passion of the Christ and an assortment
rip-snorting electric guitars, synthetic percussion, and drum kits,
resulting in a score that combines the contemporary metallic enthusiasm
of the actor in the title role with the orchestral and choral
magnificence of Debney's own classic score for the not-so-classic
Cutthroat Island. The music for
The Scorpion King will
either blow you away or, at the very least, leave you staggering from an
orchestral experience that often teases the heavy metal genre along its
journey. Many listeners had been skeptically curious as to how the
melding of Debney's two worlds would sound, though ultimately most of
the composer's collectors considered it either an enormous success or,
at the very least, a substantial guilty pleasure. Indeed, even if you
can't readily enjoy the work apart from the film,
The Scorpion
King is a fascinatingly original score. It plays to the stereotypes
of Egyptian chord progressions, explodes into its electric guitars
whenever The Rock flexes a pectoral muscle, and releases incredible
amounts of straight forward choral and orchestral majesty for the film's
grand vistas. The score also lovingly borrows a few clear ideas from
other popular film scores, including the repeated ensemble striking of
the same note from Bernard Herrmann's
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
and the wavering fluctuations of octave-separated trumpets and horns
from Don Davis'
The Matrix. Some of the more unashamedly
bombastic portions will remind of Goldsmith's
The 13th Warrior as
well. Still, though, Debney's work is creative enough from the opening
bar to compensate for any intentional or unintentional lifting. Don't
let the "Boo!" track at the start of the album discourage you from the
rest of it; if you've never heard a heavy metal cue accompanied by full
orchestra and chorus, it might catch you off guard. Obviously, the
studio and director were content to immediately distinguish this entry
from Alan Silvestri's purely
Cutthroat Island style of swash and
buckle for the previous film.
The greatest reason for the success of Debney's score
exists the fact that he incorporates the electronics (of which the
guitars, synthetics, and drums were often arranged by his own talents)
with an orchestra highlighted by two harps and a few ethnically
appropriate accents without allowing the electronics to ever detract
from the main group of players.
The Scorpion King is, at heart, a
fully orchestral and choral score that has become best known for its
occasional, awesome accompaniment of attitude, spirit, and power from
The Rock's electronic persona. On album, the majority of the serious
heavy metal ripping is concentrated near the start. By "Mathyus
Arrises," Debney employs the guitar as an ultra-cool bass region
transitional element, extending that use of the instrument into a
two-bar phrase in "Die Well Assassin" that is otherwise already
momentous with its percussion clanging and choral chanting. Debney's
thematic constructs for
The Scorpion King once again take the
franchise in a new direction, understandably jettisoning all of
Silvestri's ideas for mostly unrelated characters. These themes don't
reach out and grab you like Silvestri's did, which might disappoint some
listeners. The majority of action pieces generally avoid grand
capitulations of the themes, but they still display a remarkable respect
for pleasant harmony and rhythms. The instrumentation is creative and
sometimes haunting during the slower, more reflective moments of the
score, and more cues utilizing the ethnic vocals would have been
welcomed. Those female vocals, while maintaining a certain stereotype of
the setting, serve well to represent the erotic nature of the evil
visionary, too. The final cue of the score flourishes with an almost
Stargate-like majesty, topping off a strong, 34-minute album
presentation that may still be too short for some fans. For Debney,
The Scorpion King was his flashiest work in a while, merging the
orchestral and electronic halves of his career with strong results. Only
the need for a more dynamic and memorable theme, along with a longer
overall length on album, keeps this product from a higher rating. It is
nevertheless the most unpredictable and snazzy score of the franchise,
though many orchestral purists who can't get past the initial shock of
the score's first track gravitate towards the previous entries.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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