Screaming Projector Episode 6 - John Carpenter Special

Welcome back! In this episode we discuss an epic Screaming Projector moment - John Carpenter, storied horror director and score innovator, dropped a metal album!

Dive in with us to explore an event that this show was made for!

Transcript

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The story, an abandoned church in downtown LA, a murdered police officer, catacombs, centuries old evil, all stems from a dream that John Carpenter had in 2024. He said, it was so cinematic and vivid, I thought, I have to score this. It's kind of our first heavy metal album. His collaborator, Daniel Davies, the guitarist on the record, describes the process this way. John would describe a scene and say, We need a heavy riff here. We didn't set out to make a metal album, it just evolved that way. We didn't set out to make a metal album, it just evolved that way. That is the entire argument of this podcast, spoken by John Carpenter's guitar player in a press statement on Tuesday. Horror and metal don't just describe an audience or an aesthetic, they describe a mechanism. When you are genuinely trying to score something, something terrifying, when you stop worrying about the genre and just ask, what does the darkness sound like? you come up with a heavy riff. Every time. This show has been following the same thread. From a Birmingham rehearsal room to a studio in Homburg to a Connecticut band playing strings over death metal, always the same answer. Always the same answer. Why Carpenter specifically? This isn't a filmmaker dabbling in music as a side project. John Carpenter has been creating music that lives in the exact same space between horror and metal since 1978. In episode 2 of Screaming Projector, we ended on John Carpenter deliberately, because the score for Halloween isn't just an ordinary piece of film music. It is a dark, minimalist electronic composition that just happens to have a film attached to it. Carpenter couldn't afford a composer, so instead he taught himself keys, and what came out is architecture, a 5-4 pulse that doesn't build to dread, it begins in dread and never leaves. The single from Cathedral, Lords of the Underground, is a chugging, riff-driven metal track with ghostly synth sounds and those familiar John Carpenter disorienting piano melodies right on top. The Halloween DNA is still in there, but the guitars have finally arrived. That thing that was lurking underneath the synthesizers has finally come to the surface like the undead. Fifty years, Halloween theme to lost theme to cathedrals, horror to proto metal to metal. One unbroken line. Nobody told him to do this, no label pivot, no trend to chase. A dream arrived, and when he chose to score it honestly, not worrying about what it should sound like, it became a metal record. Cathedral dropped August 7th. The graphic novel dropped on the 4th. Go listen to Lords of the Underground. Go order it. Get into it. Here's what's coming next. We're releasing a deep dive on Patreon, the full Carpenter Arc, from the Halloween themes to the Lost Theme series to the evolution of Cathedral. I'll let you know when. That's premium content for Screaming Projector listeners. Regular episodes will continue, but we needed to give this the full Screaming Projector treatment it deserved. So until then, stay scared, stay heavy. Full Chew Lives. That's a wrap on this one. Thank you for listening to Screaming Projector. New episodes drop regularly. You can follow us on Instagram at Screaming Projector, and you can find everything at Screaming Projector.com. I'd like to hear what you have to say. I want to know what your thoughts are. Hit me up at Dave at Screaming Projector.com. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. It generally helps new people find the show. If you'd like to help support what we're building here, we're on Patreon. Every little bit helps. Until the next time, stay heavy, stay scared. Fulci Lives. Screaming Projector is a production of Screaming Projector Media. Music by D218 and Dave.