Details:
- Film: 30 Days Of Night
- Soundtrack composer: Brian Reitzell
- Original year of release: 2007
- Number of tracks: 17
- Soundtrack duration: 47 mins 21 secs
- Tracks with vocals/distracting aspects: None
- Film score duration (with distracting tracks removed): 47 mins 21 secs
- Suggested suitable book genres: Creepy, eerie horror books. Anything that pleads for a sinister backdrop.
DLS Summary:
Some soundtracks are just perfect for reading a sinister horror to. This is one such offering. The entire soundtrack has an industrial dark ambient vibe to it, with the majority of tracks not what some would consider as ‘music’ per se. But damn, is it atmospheric! Nothing overly oppressive, but instead a backdrop of sounds often accompanied by droning low notes and almost shrieking high-pitched feedback. Again, not in an oppressive way, but sinister and evocative as hell.
Unless you’re a decidedly strange person who likes to cast an eerie atmosphere in your home, I can’t see how you’d play this soundtrack in any other circumstance, other than a backdrop for reading to. And for that, especially for a dark and creepy horror, it absolutely excels.
DLS Review:
The soundtrack starts off with an eerie, quiet and creepy-as-hell first track, low quietly played, slow violins and a chilling blend of organs setting a tone that’s dripping with horror and unease. This slowly starts to build a hint of momentum with a churning industrial plod, leading towards the start of the next track.
Track 2 continues with that altogether sinister vibe. The first minute or so is almost utter silence, with a quiet breath of atmospheric sound and hints of sharp notes piercing the silence, delivering isolated pockets of blood-curdling tension. An utter sense of foreboding encapsulates every second of this track all the way to its ending.
Track 3 hits like a sledgehammer. Thumping industrial percussion and screaming electronic notes blending with layer upon layer of tense noise. Guitar feedback breaks the noise until we’re cast back into a world of tense dark ambient atmospheric reverberation.
Track 4 sticks with the low dark ambient electronic sounds accompanied by semi-high pitched echoing notes that linger in the air. It’s atmospheric and continues dripping with a sense of horror. It’s also oh so slow and lingering. Creepy as holy hell. The track ends incredibly abruptly, to the point that you might even check it didn’t simply stop playing of its own accord. A sudden cut off from the lingering feedback ambience leading to a moment of chilling silence.
Track 5 starts out quiet. The same sinister vibe is still there until a plummeting droning note takes us to a cacophony of industrial noise and a heartbeat like wave of thick sound.
Track 6 starts out with more creepy whispering notes over a backdrop of white noise like a hanging but guttural pulsing fog. It’s a quiet dark ambient track without much other than setting a cold and sinister atmosphere with hints of something almost screaming from afar.
Track 7 is distinctly different. The track start with almost a hammering at the door vibe, before moving into a 1990’s sounding electro industrial piece, still with those screaming, feedback like notes, but with industrial drums coming in to accompany the backdrop to make it more akin to something that could be classed as ‘music’. It’s got a sort of Tyler Bates vibe to it, almost like a track plucked right out of ‘300’ (2007).
Track 8 continues with another speeding highway of industrial drums to be joined by distorted guitars and layers of that much loved wall of feedback. We’re still firmly in the arena of sinister dark ambience, which is tense and altogether horror fuelled, but with a thick body of energy behind it. This eventually slips away to an emptier vacuum of nothingness other than more atmospheric low notes and stuttering electronic tones.
Track 9 is back to the incredibly quiet and creepy atmosphere we had at the start of the soundtrack. That is until we’re given a mini jump-scare with a half-burst of feedback induced energy that gradually morphs into a mounting wall of droning noise. Nothing oppressive, but more of a chilling and tense industrial-cum-dark ambient offering of atmospheric sound once again.
Track 10 stays with the quiet sinister tones, with needles of sharp violin notes almost screeching into the foreground before a reverberating clang brings this short track to an end.
Track 11 starts out with another quiet beginning, with spiderwebs of high notes piercing the darkness before a wave of dark ambient electronic noise forces its way through. Then we’re plummeted back into a void of quietness under a cloud of dark ambience again. But there’s something mounting behind this. Something that suddenly breaks through in a pulse-racing maelstrom of almost chaotic industrial noise, with drums and swirling electronic chords spinning your head.
Track 12 is another track that returns to a more energetic presence, electronic drums and sharp feedback are awash with a background wall of droning distortion. It’s the layers upon layers which make the track work so well with its dark ambient body of sound.
Track 13 is perhaps the quietest of the tracks. A very, very gradual increasing presence of sharp squealing notes which echo across a still but sinister landscape.
Track 14 feels like a shock to the system. In complete juxtaposition to the last track, here we’re suddenly being hammered by a thumping industrial sound that’s soon accompanied by feedback and a fog of swirling, almost choir like, electronic vocals. It’s nightmarish and almost 1970’s horror in feel, crossed with something akin to David Lynch and Alan Splet’s score from ‘Eraserhead’ (1977).
Track 15 is another return to a creepy dark ambient backdrop, with low noted organs and hints of sharpness layered over it before a simplistic piano piece starts to make itself known. This edges, step by step, into something verging on what we might again call ‘music’ before eventually stepping back into a fog of dark ambient atmosphere once again.
Track 16 delivers more of the same quiet but sinister tones accompanied by a fog-like guttural feedback that has a pulsing body to it.
Track 17 is the final track and stays firmly with the theme that’s been running through the whole of the industrial and dark ambient soundtrack. A sense of grim and utterly tense foreboding is felt throughout this final track. It stays quiet and unnerving, without breaking into any of the earlier sharpness or allowing any industrial edges to take over. Dark ambient until the end.
As a soundtrack for reading to:
The soundtrack as a whole:
© DLS Reviews
