Bear McCreary

Water Tower Music

Out Now on CD and Vinyl

McCreary is best known for TV soundtracks such as Da Vinci’s Demons and Outlander, but you know you’re in for a fun movie score here when it opens with a Serj Tankian cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla,” finally making an appearance in an actual Godzilla film – over the end credits – 42 years after its release…

There are plenty of lovely references to and reworkings of Akira Ifukube’s themes from the classic Toho movie series. Where Michael Giacchino’s 19-minute tribute over the end credits of Cloverfield was a wonderful pastiche, here we have somewhat less obvious , but more fitting and better blended-in uses of the original themes. The movie’s opening theme is McCreary’s magnificent reworking of Ifukube’s original Gojira theme, swelled with a full orchestra with Japanese drums and voice chorus, and this theme makes some great appearances elsewhere in the score, notably in rousing form in the track entitled Rebirth, and then in the climactic Battle In Boston part of the score.

Here, King Ghidorah’s original theme is present in the taiko drum underbeat to his new theme, which has an Asian religious chant as its frontline. That drumming then drives most of the action cues, which works quite well. In a way it’s a little too generic these days – it feels as if all movie scores right now use just a rapid drum and some dark mood music as their action cues, but here it fits the fact that Ghidorah is the main antagonist, and the taiko reflects the franchise’s Asian origins. Certainly it’s an improvement on McCreary’s action cues from Nu BSG.

Of the adaptations from Toho scores folded into this score, Rodan perhaps suffers the worst, musically, as his theme was never actually that melodic – or good, really – to start with, being a rather discordant and short theme, and here is really represented only by the distinctive French horn blare of discordance among the action cues and the much more nuanced and well-realized use of the Godzilla, Ghidorah, and Mothra themes.

Mothra’s theme, originally by Yuki Koseki, is present very clearly, the song used by the twin fairies in the Toho films instantly recognizable to any Kaiju fan, albeit without lyrics. In fact, McCreary’s version is a standout of the album, an excellent evocative orchestral piece that sounds nothing like the electronic disco-ish original rendering, but nails the melody beautifully. That said, this score doesn’t quite hit the more involving character and emotional cue levels that his music for Da Vinci’s Demons or Outlander did, so, if you’re a fan of his, this falls somewhere in the middle of his qualitative range.

Verdict: As a genre score overall, there’s a good mix of awe and pounding action, which is par for the course with modern movie soundtracks, but the clever integration of the Toho themes raises it if somewhat too. Recommended. 8/10

David A McIntee