SHAUN OF THE DEAD Soundtrack Album
© N/A

Mania Grade: A
Reviewed Format: CD
Composers: Daniel Mudford & Pete Woodhead
Songs: Queen, Ash, Goblin, The Smiths, etc.
Distributor: Island Records (UK, 2004)
Length: 67:13
Number of Tracks: 21

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SHAUN OF THE DEAD Soundtrack Album

Regrettably not released in the USA, the soundtrack album to the funniest horror film in years, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, is a splendidly gnarly feast for the ears. Interspersed with dialog excerpts (which would surely gain the release copious PARENTAL ADVISORY WARNING labels in the USA) that are usually the bane of soundtrack aficionados (and if this were a score album that would certainly be a consideration in the negative) are a shuffling horde of hard, metal, and alternative rock numbers that resound off of the dialog snippets rather nicely.

In any case, the album should be quite appealing to both zombie fans and pop/rock music fans. Aside from the score tracks (brooding synth tonalities mostly heard beneath dialog in seven tracks, except for the 10:30-minute Goblin-inspired "Shaun of the Dead Suite," which gives it more of its due with spooky echoing synth tonalities, electric guitared rhythms and riffs, watery synth swirlings, and eerie warbling flecks of percussion and electronica), the album captures much of the film's zany silliness. The Queen music that appeared in the film is here (director Edgar Wright's ode to that band), which is nice enough but available elsewhere, but the charm of the album is in tracks like I Monster's deliciously retro "The Blue Wrath," (the film's Main Title track), Lemon Jelly's minimalist variant of Peter Cetera's "If You Leave Me Now," The Special's very appealing 60's-ish lounge tune, "Ghost Town," The Smith's "Panic," and Kid Koala's circuslike interpretation of DAWN OF THE DEAD's classic mall muzak, "The Gonk."

The news broadcasts that rampage through in brief moments in the film are reprised by an unidentified vocalist in "Normality," eventually progressing into a quasi Devo-like rendition for rhythmic spoken word.

There is also a hidden track at the end, "un Dead (Cheggars Vs The Gonk - Osymyso Remix)," which is a cool remix of "The Gonk" in carnival-like fashion with an absolutely delirious vocal accompaniment by UK television host Keith Chegwin (noted for CHEGGERS PLAYS POP, among other early morning shows) and a zombie chorus, replicating the zombie game show shown in the film's epilog. The album's assortment of quirky, alternative, and modern music becomes an extension of the comic dialog bits and pieces of the film, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a exuberant mix tape that will get you reaching for your cricket bat and heading out the door to remove the head or destroy the brain of the nearest shambling, flaking dead thing you can find. I'll repeat that ...