Music in like Brian Tyler's Killing Room.

February 24, 2012 10:47 AM

What are some specific albums reminiscent of Brian Tyler's score to Killing Room?

I love how propulsive, sinister, and elegiac it is. Great reading and writing music.

Any genre is fine for recommendations, although obviously I'd much prefer the music be performed with an orchestra and/or choir. It's okay if it's a little bombastic, but let's not go too crazy - more Mass in B Minor than Carmina Burana, please. I'm also too much of a philistine for something too dissonant/aleatoric/modernist, but if you could ease me into it, I could be persuaded.

I'm already familiar with Arvo Pärt, although if there is an especially good Pärt album out there, then by all means throw it at me. I already have and enjoy the Estonian Philharmonic's Te Deum and the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra's Fratres.

I'm also already a big fan of Elliot Goldenthal's work, including but far from limited to his scores to Alien^3 and In Dreams. If he has other scores which fit the bill, then by all means, share 'em.

posted by Sticherbeast to media & arts (2 answers total)

A sample from the score in question.
posted by philip-random at 11:57 AM on February 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I just discovered the "stumped" tag and the unanswered sidebar thanks to a comment on the gray, and I am here to recommend you Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Sibelius's Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, both of which are symphonic poems that evoke Hades. The first 3/4 or so of Sibelius's Finlandia is also all broody and sinister, but then those pesky Finns decide to get all nationalistic and rise up against the Russian occupiers and the last couple of minutes are probably more triumphal than you're looking for. I'm not sure if Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht may be too modernist for you, but it's quite tame as far as Schoenberg goes.

And in general, you might explore the genre of symphonic poems/tone poems. These are a single-movement orchestral works that often evoke a specific scene or story--and hence has less variation in mood, tempo, etc., and more emphasis on mood and atmosphere rather than structure, compared to a symphony, for example.
posted by drlith at 1:15 PM on June 19, 2012