Original Review by Alan Rogers (First uploaded at maintitles.net)
Drive Angry stars Nicholas Cage as a bad man who is sent to hell, escapes from hell and goes on “A Mission”. That’s all you really need to know about this movie as knowing any more isn’t really going to help you “get” this score. In fact, I may already have given you too much information. But that doesn’t really matter as the little you do know will be blown from your head by the aural force of the music contained on this CD. Composer Michael Wandmacher taps into his experiences playing in Heavy Metal and Glam Rock bands to deliver for director Patrick Lussier a rock-fuelled, Western-influenced soundtrack.
Drive Angry starts out as it means to go on. “Full Frontal Shotgun” kicks things off with powerful electric guitars and pounding percussion, driving (no pun intended) the music forwards with all the sound levels cranked up to the max. The overriding memory of this score is that it’s loud, headachingly loud. Track after track is filled with the rock-and-roll mix of guitars and percussion, each track sounding more like individual instrumental B-sides from seventies rock bands than carefully thought out underscore. But then subtle underscore would be completely lost in a film of this nature. Read the rest of this entry »
