How committed are Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to their nominal side gig of composing for film and television? Here’s how: In the middle of releasing their sprawling three-volume score for Watchmen, the HBO adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark superhero comic, they dropped a 77-minute soundtrack for Trey Edward Shults’ indie drama Waves, too. Clearly, the bug that bit the duo circa The Social Network in 2010 hasn’t let go. Based on the quality of their music for Watchmen, that’s great news. Their score for showrunner Damon Lindelof’s sociopolitically fraught story of vigilantism is their strongest and most direct since The Social Network—or even Reznor’s soundtrack for the 1996 video game Quake.
The horror-movie atmospherics of Quake are the closest reference point for Watchmen’s first and strongest track, “How the West Was Really Won.” The show’s unofficial theme music—it recurs repeatedly in the series’ most frightful moments, including the ripped-from-the-comic image of a gigantic alien squid in the ruins of Manhattan—it’s the sound of Reznor and Ross going full John Carpenter, with a simple synth hook that seems to swallow up more of the world around you with each repetition. Its melodic structure recurs throughout the score, in the gently acoustic “Watch Over This Boy” at the end of Volume 1, the jazz throwback “Nostalgia Blues” on Volume 2 (co-written and performed by John Beasley), and the major-key weightlessness of “The Waiting Sky” on Volume 3. The original song is resilient enough to mutate in this way, showing off the duo’s skill with leitmotif as well as their considerable range. It’s the theme music Nine Inch Nails fans have been waiting for them to deliver.
It also starts off the soundtracks with a bang rather than a simmer, a mood maintained through much of Volume 1. “Nun With a Motherf*&*ing Gun” pulses and clangs like a reimagined version of Nitzer Ebb’s “Join in the Chant,” while “Objects in Mirror (Are Closer Than They Appear)” and “Kattle Battle” share a sleazy, slithering bass groove. While the bangers largely vanish by the time the quieter, more ruminative Volume 2 comes around, they return in a big way with Volume 3’s leadoff track, “Doomsday Prepper,” which comes fully loaded with scuzzy Nine Inch Nails guitar.
Reznor and Ross even work covers into the show’s repertoire. The trilogy ends with a quiet, reverent piano cover of “Life on Mars?”, the world-beating ballad by Reznor’s late friend and mentor David Bowie. But the pair are equally reverent toward Wham!’s “Careless Whisper,” which they reconfigure into Volume 3’s “No Rhythm.” To my ears, there’s even a tip of the hat to Bernard Herrmann’s jazzy Taxi Driver theme at the start of the big-band pastiche “The Way It Used to Be.” That’s not to say they’re incapable of love themes all their own: “Which Came First” is a wistful piano ballad that mutates into sci-fi synth; its melody returns with a full choir in “Lincoln Tunnel” several tracks later.
In keeping with the disorienting tone of Lindelof’s show, the albums are peppered with dialogue snippets lifted from the series, from teasers for fictional TV shows (“American Promo Story,” “A Man Walks Into an Intrinsic Field”) to pharmaceutical infomercials (“The Elephant in the Room”). Taking this several steps further, as is the Reznor way, the vinyl version of each release comes disguised as an album from within Watchmen’s world: Volume 1 is the latest release by the fake rock group Sons of Pale Horse, Volume 2 is the score for the Ryan Murphy–esque TV show American Hero Story, and Volume 3 is an old album by “The” Nine Inch Nails, the genuine article’s fictional equivalent.
But as has been the case with other Reznor/Ross scores, you needn’t be sold on the show, or even familiar with it, to enjoy the score. Taken together, Watchmen Vols. 1-3 play like a dispatch from some other weird world, one that feels like Reznor and Ross’s alternately paranoid and plaintive music. In other words: a world much like our own.
