Scaremeister - 31 Spirits (2014)

SKINNY PUPPY fans are holding their breath already for this album but this album is special for several reasons. Of course the involvement of Cevin Key himself together with Ken “Hiwatt” Marshall, long-time sound engineer for SKINNY PUPPY and FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY, catches the attention of the Industrial community worldwide. Third man on the boat is soundtrack composer Traz Damji (Need For Speed, NBA Live, The Sims) and short little soundtracks is what you can expect from this album.
It is an interesting story: In 2007 the three gentlemen came together to produce short pieces of music for horror movie trailers. As you'd expect these experienced musicians delivered top-notch quality and their instrumental snippets became quite a success in the film industry. In case you're a movie aficionado you might recognize a few bits from this album from trailers for ‘Inglorious Bastards’, ‘Transformers II’, ‘My Bloody Valentine’, ‘Book of Eli’ or ‘Halloween 2’. The album ‘31 Spirits’ is simply a compilation of these short pieces of music, all of them just around two minutes long.
The big question is: Do these brief instrumental snippets work together as an unit, as an album? Hell, yes! Even though the 31 tracks (“spirits”!) were presumably produced separately and surely for a different purpose than being on the same album they frame a fantastic 50 minute trip of atmospherically dense, homogeneous music. Of course it's a dark trip, no surprise really when these guys were involved and had horror films in mind, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable dark trip. Soundtrack fans should snap at the chance to buy this album, and SKINNY PUPPY fans, too! It is almost impossible to highlight specific tracks, you just have the see these 31 spirits as one sonic entity! So light some candles, grab a bottle of wine, lean back and let your imagination create a movie to this great soundtrack!