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The Venom score's vicious and savage attitude is not devoid of intelligence, as Göransson does offer some smart ideas in his work here, but the rendering of his music is so rough and abusive that one has to wonder what type of unstable personalities can derive standalone enjoyment from it. Film music rarely embodies so much destructive hate without offering a counterbalancing factor. To be fair to Göransson's approach to Venom, one must separate the intriguingly clever, underlying compositional structures for the main characters from the totally hideous way he expresses those ideas. The atmosphere of the final mix forces orchestral and electronic tones into open warfare, with the latter typically prevailing because of its obnoxiously loud personality. There is a full orchestra at work in this recording, including woodwinds, but don't expect them to compete with the plethora of synthetic grinding noises and the inherent manipulation of tones that come with them. Several of these abrasive noises recur for specific actions in the story, and that's fine except for the fact that they all seem to remind of the worst noises you hear in the dentist's office (minus the patient's screams) or commercial construction zones, the latter taking the drilling sounds from the bones of your teeth to masonry bricks and steel plates. A variety of prickly electronic sounds are employed to represent the viral nature of the symbiotes, many cues applying at least subtle shades of these shifty, depressing descendants of Jerry Goldsmith's far more appetizing take on the same idea. At times, Göransson resorts to thrashing synthetic tones that stereotypically alter pitch or are reversed for maximum discontentment. These techniques get old very fast, and they're no substitute for intelligent horror from organic methodology. Film music collectors will recognize some of the industrial banging and broadly droning bass manipulation from Tom Holkenborg's scores and the stomping, altered brass foghorn effect on key from Hans Zimmer, none of which particularly interesting or tolerable at this point. The choral element is spared much outward manipulation, usually seeking to enhance the fantasy environment with either troubled wonderment or nearly gothic fright. The singers' presence offers a mostly tonal layer in a score that is as unpleasantly dissonant as possible in most passages.

The coolness factor really struggles in Göransson's music for Venom, an electric guitar attempting to achieve this tone as necessary to elevate this score's impact; the highlights of the work, ironically, mostly feature the guitar in some fashion. For a movie about unbridled, badass violence, the guitar is an absolute necessity. But it gets lost in the horror techniques, as does the orchestral action outside of two or three notable chase cues. Sadly, the obnoxious rendering of the music will likely obscure the composer's smart intermingling of the score's two primary recurring themes to symbolize the merging of Eddie and the symbiote. The latter's musical representation is simplistic and brutish, but it certainly gets the point across. It is highlighted by a descending trio of blasting, processed horns in foghorn mode, enunciated inelegantly at each turn. Introduced at the end of "Space Exploration," it realizes its action mode in "Run Eddie, Run" before becoming even more maliciously overbearing in "Eyes, Lungs, Pancreas." By "You Belong With Us," the idea has structurally merged with the theme for Eddie, openly revealing itself as the underlying bass chord progression for that other character theme. It's a nice nugget of intelligence that will be challenging to notice on screen because of all the surrounding noise in the music. Eddie's theme actually conveys significant range, its series of rising, three-note phrases contrasting the symbiote theme well. Starting softly and disillusioned in "Eddie's Blues," the idea turns to chasing fast in "Run Eddie, Run" (the dentist's drill effect in this cue is humorously awful), melodramatically dark fantasy in "Self Defense" and "Pedal to the Metal," and mixes violently with the symbiote motif in "Eyes, Lungs, Pancreas." It's broken down in "Annie, I'm Scared" and contemplative early in "Battle on the Launch Pad" before that latter cue, the highlight of the score, transitions the idea to a more orchestral heroic fantasy action mode, including dramatic electric guitar statements. Another bright spot in the score is the Eddie theme in conversational stewing on light strings with the symbiote theme on piano underneath in "You Belong With Us." It's in the merging of the two motifs that a true Venom theme reveals itself. In the end, though, this score is a dreadfully uncool experience outside of its brief moments of action appeal. Perhaps Göransson was making light of the fact that the symbiotes despise high-pitched noises. Unfortunately, most humans are going to be repelled by this music, too. Repugnance of this saturation wasn't necessary.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 55:29