For the international version of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Dario Argento contracted Goblin to write a score, which brought a distinctly proggy (and Italian) vibe to the American film. Electric guitars and an assortment of percussive instruments join the keyboards and bass through a wide range of styles, with tribal chanting and ragtime piano riffing probably being the two furthest points on the score’s mood spectrum.
More standard prog rock does appear, as with the fairly quick “Zaratozom”, and it’s with these pieces that the band seems most confident, though they don’t falter on the steps outside their comfort zone. There’s also a bit of a weird split between full ‘songs’ and what are essentially looped cues, but the jumping about with styles (there’s even a take on country western at one point) helps minimize the dissonance of those shifts. On the down-side, the band’s apparent urge to show off how wide a range they could make the music cover leads to it feeling more like a style demo reel than a cohesive score, and the diversity of the tracks ends up running into itself too often for any individual piece to end up particularly memorable.
Here’s the alternate cover art.
The cover art used in Japan.
In France.
In Germany.
For an Italian reissue.
Another Italian reissue.
Yet another Italian reissue.
And the 2018 remastered reissue.
Scrambled Brains 