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Frenchy Cabazon: I agree! Nutter was singing in the wrong key!
Preston Nutter: No I wasn't! It was Loutzenheiser! I was singing in E flat minor.
Frenchy Cabazon: The SONG'S in F sharp major!
Shannon Bell: I think they're the same thing. I mean, E flat is the relative major of F sharp.
- From Cannibal: The Musical
I really wanted to like Ravenous.
Or, more specifically, I wanted a lot of people to see it and like it, because the basic idea behind the movie is really cool - the Donner Party as a commentary on manifest destiny, linking the insane thirst of cannibalism with the country’s hunger for expansion. Plus, it was a horror film set in the Gold Rush, and there’s about two of them in that genre.
To be sure, the movie had its faults - killing the more interesting characters off in the first reel, turning the latter half of the film into the usual oh-God-I’m-a-vampire angst that we’ve seen before, the trailer spoiling a major surprise - but the visual sweep of the film, the way that everybody actually seems to be living in the West, the omnipotent snow, and above all, the music made the film for me. I was trying to remember how it went when I was walking back to my dorm room, especially the haunting, two-note opening of the main theme.
It came as a relief when I finally bought the soundtrack, and I’ve been listening to the songs - converted to MP3 for easier listening - ever since. Why am I reviewing the album? Primarily because the soundtrack to Ravenous makes the best horrific Wild West soundtrack I’ve ever seen, to the point where I’m considering setting up a campaign for just such a purpose.
Originally, I thought about going through the album track by track, but that swiftly turned out to be a stupid idea when I realized that I didn’t know the names of half of the instruments, and that describing music is like describing...hell, you throw in the metaphor of your choice. It just doesn’t work. I can recommend this music highly to anybody who’s interested in fantastic music, especially those of you running Old West games. So, highlights are included below:
Boyd’s Journey: Pretty much the centerpiece of the album, this introduces the movie’s main theme - which is basically two or three notes played over and over again on a banjo, like a form of percussion, while deep, almost cavernous drums and a dry clicking noise for punctuation; fortunately, before it starts getting on your nerves, an amusing squeezebox line slips into the music, along with a few violins. The overall effect - and it’s used elsewhere - is to suggest music as if it were played on the frontier itself, rather than in a Hollywood studio. Although it sounds quite bouncy, you can imagine the opening lines being played by the kid from Deliverance with remarkable ease; it’d make great travel music, or for when the characters finally reach civilization.
Colquohn’s Story is one of those tracks that starts off great and gets even better as it goes on - a steady squeezebox tune that picks up a companion series of notes, played on something that sounds like an Eastern European version of a banjo and a flute. As it plays, the brass swells from underneath it, making the tune sound more and more creepy until the menace of the band takes the song over. Still playing underneath is the squeezebox and the banjo, and the overall effect is like watching the Donner party bounce off, only to watch as they get caught in the snowstorm and start eating each other. There’s absolutely no excuse for not using this theme as the players advance into an unknown setting; it starts off fun, and then slowly drops into one of the more menacing themes I’ve ever heard.
The Weendigo Myth is a single voice doing a Native American chant, a cappella. Of this, I can’t say much; it sounds precisely accurate, and it obviously means something, but it doesn’t have a tune as such, and would work better as a looped track in the background rather than as a centerpiece to a story.
Somebody on Amazon pointed out that Trek to the Cave is pretty damned close to Copland’s Appalachian Spring; unfortunately, I haven’t listened to that track recently, and so I can’t make the judgement. While it’s a beautiful series of vaguely atonal notes, it takes a sharp turn into a shock theme at the very end, which makes its utility for a gaming session rather limited; you’re either going to have to turn the gaming session on a dime, from gentle to sudden shock, or just have it loop whichever part you want. (A character falls down a cliff and breaks his leg, necessitating the sudden shift at the end.)
“He Was Licking Me!” - in the movie, this was a wound that the movie’s cannibal was licking for the blood, although the secondary meaning has a lot to do with the film’s subtheme. (The film’s main characters seem closeted, or can easily be read as gay.) It’s a low, droning tune that doesn’t go anywhere in particular, which in turn makes it perfect for setting the song to loop and letting it play in the background.
“Run!” - which is a bouncy little banjo-and-violin piece with a smile on its face and a bloody hatchet behind its back. There’s no change throughout, but its inclusion on a soundtrack for a horror movie can be explained by the fact that the song is played while one character is being chased down by a cannibal madman - it’s an expression of joy at finally being able to get what you really wanted to eat.
While I hate to keep repeating the phrase “a simple tune, repeated over and over again”, that’s very much the case in these compositions, and I’m well aware that a lot of songs are basically just the same notes repeated over and over again. Think of Phillip Glass when you read the descriptions; it’s difficult to explain just how it sounds, For example, “Let’s Go Kill That Bastard” has the same pounding drums as the latter half of The Cave, accompanied by a staccato drum and a pulsing string section that plays at about the same pace as your heart when you’ve just realized that there’s a panther stalking you. Before you have time to get bored with it, a chilling violin jumps in and provides an extra bit of accompaniment before jumping out again; the entire song pulses with energy. It’s perfect chase music.
The Pit is a slow, languid piece that plays as a relaxation; it’d be very useful for an excursion into the spirit world, since it has no particular urgency to it, only a dim, alien feel. Think of walking through the clouds, and you’ll have a rough idea of what this song’s like.
Manifest Destiny and Saveoursoulissa - the latter of which is, I believe, named after the utterances of one of the dying characters - are both excellent tracks. Saveoursoulissa is especially neat, sounding something like the opening theme to Silent Hill - it has the same droning feel, along with the Eastern European stringed instrument playing a rapid series of notes.
It’s bouncy, it’s good, and you can hear big chunks of it simply by renting Ravenous and listening for the musical cues; they’re not hard to spot. The soundtrack to Ravenous is a must buy if you’re interested in a horror Western, or even if you’re interested in running a horror campaign. It's a truly wonderful album.
-Darren MacLennan
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