The Devil's Advocate

While there are many good moments in this score, it does tend to rather leap from style to style which makes for a slightly uneven listening experience. There is no main theme as such, but there is a motif or two that appears throughout the score, however along the lines of Goldsmith's Omen Ave Satani. It seems a commonality with many Howard scores that there is no great main theme and as such a lot of his scores loose a lot in translation from screen to disc. Indeed, much of Devil's Advocate seems like it was written with the scene in mind with slightly less regard for a score album. This is fair enough of course, but it does mean I have reservations about recommending the album.

There are some really quite lyircal sections with sinister, twinkling pianos as well as the appearance of a boy soprano near the end (which isn't altogether surprising given the common use of the young male voice in many recent scores, perhaps a trend started by Elliot Goldenthal in his score for Alien 3, although I do think it was used very effectively in that score. One of the best parts of the really otherwise quite awful score). There are a few sections of really awful noise in this score, a prblem which plagues many modern horror scores. It is rather a shame as they somewhat spoil the music at times as the more melodic parts are really quite good at times. The best tracks are near the end as they alternate between the haunting beauty of the boy soprano, some grumbling orchestral and choral moments and actually lift the music no end. However, it is too little too late for me and most of the time it's just not worth waiting that long to get there. The inclusion of Air on the G String in the middle of the better tracks is exceptionally annoying as it interrupts the music just as it is improving and turning into an entertaining score.

Perhaps my dislike (in general) of horror scores is the reason why I'm not keen on this score, but since there are some horror scores that I do enjoy, you only need to ready my reviews of The Omen and Needful Things to know that. The track lengths being so short doesn't help the flow of the score either, and this point is most neatly show by the fact that pretty much all the best tracks are at least a couple of minutes long. Maybe JNH fans will like it, but otherwise for horror junkies only (mostly) though.