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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Volcano (Alan Silvestri)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you predictably enjoy all of Alan Silvestri's action
scores, even those entries that stir up significant bombast in some
passages without really establishing any unique qualifiers to grab your
attention in the long-term.
Avoid it... if you are tired of formulaic and predictable action scores that essentially do not offer anything you haven't heard before, because Volcano has solid ingredients and a pair of decent themes, but they don't yield a memorable whole.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Volcano: (Alan Silvestri) According to the movie
Volcano, an eruption of lava was set to destroy Los Angeles in
1997, killing untold thousands of humans, diminishing property values,
and annihilating the very industry that brought this laughably
improbable film to life. The late 1990's were a renaissance for the
natural disaster flick, though, and, throwing in some moderately popular
actors at the time with the newly available CGI technology to show the
mayhem, just about any plot with a decent amount of destruction was
shot. Among this burst of disaster films, Volcano was a merely
average entry, making a moderate splash at the summer box office and
failing to compete with the arguably inferior Dante's Peak. Its
rendering of lava flows in urban streets was thrilling in parts, but
everything about the production seemed formulaic, not excluding composer
Alan Silvestri's score. Through that era, Silvestri had provided decent
action material for films of suspect quality, ranging from above average
(Judge Dredd) to rather forgettable (Eraser), never really
touching upon some of the great material he had written for more
successful adventure films in the 1980's. The same mediocrity applies to
Volcano, for which Silvestri composed perhaps the most
predictable and typical disaster score of them all. You sometimes have
to wonder if a composer sees a finished product and isn't as enthused
about it as he or she was when reading the script, because
Volcano was a film that could really have used a standout score
to elevate it beyond the norm. Instead, there are some basically
interesting ideas that Silvestri explores, mostly embedded in mundane
orchestral action rhythms, and some nicely executed instrumental
techniques to generate a disturbingly atonal environment. The studio
ensemble for Volcano produces adequate noise, but does so without
much spark or other invigorating energy, and Silvestri includes the
faint mixing of a seemingly synthetic choir and synclavier to provide
the mandatory sense of fantasy awe for the subject matter.
Two primary themes exist in Volcano, one to represent the lava and one for the humans battling to stop and/or channel it. The latter is heard at the outset of the film, but not necessarily in an incarnation you would recognize. Silvestri references a delicate 4-note tingling motif from synthesizers, a sibling to the descending time travel motif in the Back to the Future films, to introduce the city landscape and its unsuspecting population, using hopelessly optimistic string alternations in the major key to suggest what will ultimately morph into the main heroic identity later in the film. He throws in a few dissonant chords in conjunction with this pleasant motif to make sure the audience knows that something will be awry. The transformation this theme makes throughout the picture, from the false security at the outset to the full fantasy mode later on, is remarkable, but it's so totally complete that most viewers of the film won't notice that evolution. (The sound effects are mixed so loudly in the movie, too, that it's tough to notice much about the music at all in context, actually.) As signs of an impending eruption appear in "Miracle Mile," the lava's brutal 6-note theme is suggested and the dissonance grows more prevalent. A short burst of sustained action at the end of the cue offers a secondary phrase associated with the lava. In "Tarnation," the lava's full representation in the score is felt, including the deliberate, low brass theme that sounds like leftovers from Predator. Also of intriguing use is trilling horns, a technique not normally employed by Silvestri; his application of the wavering brass here is far lower in the instruments' ranges than Elliot Goldenthal's concurrent use in scores of the time and is therefore perhaps more palatable for the listener. The percussion section is put to the test in this cue as well, adding both broad thumps and militaristic snare rips at regular intervals. A sense of cohesion, however, doesn't arrive until the breakout cue, "Teamwork," in which the synthetic choir is added to higher ranges of brass and the full bed of percussion to introduce the newly transformed humans' theme at the end of the cue. Extensions of the better organized action sound in Volcano continue in "Build a Wall"and "March of the Lava," arguably the best cues of the score. The lava and humans' themes do battle in alternating bombastic statements as a nearly constant rhythm propels them both forward. The concert suite from Volcano, of sorts, is "March of the Lava," the only truly engaging take-away on album for sustained appreciation. Aside from a victorious crescendo with the synthetic choir in "Roark's Missing," the score loses its steam and resolves with a light woodwind finale in "Cleansing Rain" that takes a page or two from Jerry Goldsmith's sensitivity. Interestingly, the theme that Silvestri introduces in "Cleansing Rain" does not seem to unwind the humans' motif in any way, oddly choosing instead to provide an all-new theme at that juncture. Never does the Volcano score really involve the listener on album; even at its height, it's a score that can pass by with little notice despite the significant noise that it produces. Countless suspense refrains break up the rhythmic flow of most action cues, too. A very short running time on the original 1997 Varèse Sarabande album long made the score a difficult prospect to recommend, while an expanded 79-minute presentation from Varèse as part of its limited CD Club in 2016 better fleshes out Silvestri's intentions. The longer presentation exposes more solid action passages that will recall Judge Dredd, and hearing the fuller cues from the climax, highlighted by "Explosions," better reveals the heightened melodrama built into that final third of the story. Running the entire gambit from horror to suspense, action to resolution, is the rather short "Tunnel Fever," emblematic of the score's constant shifting of gears. Much of the newly released material on the 2016 product is redundant, including a more than doubling of the light variation of the humans' theme at the outset. It's a respectable, decent listening experience that offers ten to fifteen minutes of enjoyable material for any Silvestri collector, but it receives only a tepid recommendation because the composer accomplishes not much more than the minimum he basically needed to for the assignment, with little memorable gravy left over. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
1997 Album:
Total Time: 29:23
2016 Album: Total Time: 79:01
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1997 album includes no extra information about the score or film. That of the 2016
product features extensive information about both.
Recorded and Mixed by: Dennis Sands Assistant Engineers: Tom Harditsy, Dave Marquette, Charlie Paakkari Music Editor: Kenneth Karman Assistant Music Editor: Jacqui Tager Synclavier Programming: Simon Franglen Auricle Programming: David Bifano
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Volcano are Copyright © 1997, 2016, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 5/13/97 and last updated 7/8/16. |
