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Venom
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Composed and Produced by:
Ludwig Göransson
Co-Orchestrated and Co-Conducted by:
Edward Trybek
Co-Conducted by:
Jasper Randall
Co-Orchestrated by:
Henri Wilkinson Jonathan Beard
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Regular U.S. release.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you need musical inspiration to fuel your next violent
rampage, because there's practically no redemption in this brazenly
nasty and brutal score.
Avoid it... if you reject abrasively manipulated music of glorified
brutality that may have intelligent structure but is overwhelmed by
unnecessarily vicious malice in its rendering.
BUY IT
 | Göransson |
Venom: (Ludwig Göransson) Thanks to Sony's
somewhat orphaned initial ownership of the "Spider-Man" character and
its related concepts on screen, the franchise involving that realm has
been rather incoherent in its reboots, finally merging with the larger
Marvel Cinematic Universe in the late 2010's but struggling to develop
its properties with the same success as the competing "X-Men" concept.
Although the Spider-Man villain Venom was introduced in 2007's
Spider-Man 3, Sony sought for years to spin the character off
into its own films, and that incarnation of nastiness was realized with
2018's Venom. Perhaps the meanest and most senseless entry in the
MCU, this movie contains no real hero, understandably, the anti-hero and
even worse villains conveying violence for the sake of violence and
hoping that the element of coolness that comes from raw aggression can
carry the day. It didn't accomplish that goal for critics, as the film
was soundly panned, but audiences still rewarded Venom with
enough box office prowess to guarantee sequel plans. A character origin
story, Venom explores how evil, off-world symbiotes infiltrate
humanity in search of hosts, and journalist Eddie Brock becomes the
unwilling recipient of the lone-surviving symbiote of those that came to
Earth from a passing comet. These symbiotes typically kill their hosts,
turning them into homicidal monsters in the process. Without the
balancing of the concept with Spider-Man, the world of Venom alone is
depressingly morbid and brutal, yielding a story that will dissatisfy
anyone with evolved empathy for humanity. The music for Venom
only exacerbates the unattractively bad attitude of the film's story,
Eminem's song, "Venom," containing more aggressively aggrieved usage of
the word "fuck" than any same person would want to tabulate. Swedish
musician Ludwig Göransson, fresh off his acclaimed contribution to
Black Panther, re-enters the super-hero/super-villain genre
because of his past collaboration with director Ruben Fleischer, and he
supplies an expectedly malevolent, loathsome, and unappetizing original
score appropriate for the topic. Nothing from Christopher Young's solid
material for the character in 2007 survives.
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
1. Space Exploration (4:23)
2. Symbiotes Arrive (2:03)
3. First Contact (3:29)
4. Eddie's Blues (4:50)
5. Run, Eddie, Run (1:47)
6. What's Wrong With Me (2:33)
7. Panic at the Bistro (1:23)
8. Humans... Such Poor Design (2:55)
9. Self Defense (3:38)
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10. Pedal to the Metal (3:50)
11. Eyes, Lungs, Pancreas (2:45)
12. You Want Up? (1:40)
13. Venom Rampage (3:03)
14. Annie, I'm Scared (1:47)
15. Parasite (2:57)
16. Unexpected Ally (0:51)
17. Battle on the Launch Pad (8:18)
18. You Belong With Us (3:09)
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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