These recent Empire film soundtracks showed up on my radar just as I was starting to drool over that Arrow box set that just came out in '23. "Come closer..." states the tagline on the Troll VHS sleeve and poster. For fans of this weird 80s dark fantasy, we know that it's probably the last thing you'd ever want to do. But Troll's allure has sustained over the past four decades, for its oddball premise (an apartment building comes under the perverse thrall of the titular character, essentially becoming a doorway to another world), as well as its weird connections to the Harry Potter novels that came years later (the main protagonist in Troll shares the same name, and there's some level of rumor that this movie had some kind of influence on Potter author J.K. Rowling). And it's got all of the shit that we love about the wackiest 80s-era horror flicks: wonderfully grotesque puppet monsters from director John Carl Buechler, some truly unsettling body horror / topiary elements, a cracking story by Ed Naha, unstoppable performances from the great Michael Moriarty, Phil Fondacaro, June Lockhart , an early, pre-Seinfeld role for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and...Sonny Bono? And that score. That score. Like most of the Empire Films, producer Charles band utilized his brother, composer Richard Band, to craft the music for the film. And more often than not, this guy just knocks it out of the park.

I love 'em all, I'm a huge Band fan, but 1986's Troll is almost unanimously considered to be amongst his best film score work. And I agree. In spite of the film's darker, sometimes nightmarish qualities, his music here is a hoot. The score is presented here as a series of "Cantos", sequenced I through V, with "Cantos Profanae" appearing in the middle of the track order. This is classic Band, wearing his Bernard Herrmann (especially Hermann) and Jerry Goldsmith influences proudly on his sleeve, but injecting these grandiose orchestrations with the kinds of quirked-out electronics, wistful melodies, and eerie woodwind voices that distinguish his fantasy and horror film arrangements. And this one is great, a total nostalgia-bomb for me, having watched Troll countless times as a teenager.

It's ambitious beyond his previous keyboard / synthesizer heavy works, bringing full vocal and instrumental orchestration to bear to craft the bizarre fairy-tale ambience of the movie. There's none of the campiness that marked other scores from the same time period, but that's paired with a progressive rock undercurrent that really enhances the offbeat feel. These "Cantos" have a strange, sparkling majesty that's like nothing else I heard on the Empire videotapes. In fact, one of the things I find amusing about Band's score for Troll is how adjacent it is to what people now describe as "dungeon synth". With his appropriation of medieval themes, choirs, and murky atmosphere, there is a lot of stuff on this album that frankly wouldn't sound too out of place on a tape release from labels like Out of Season, Gondolin, or Dungeons Deep. If you're hooked on that general sound, you'll dig what Band is doing here. Eerie, sparkling, the score introduces that immediately recognizable staccato theme as soon as the music kicks in, a theme that is as unique to Troll as Band's theme for films like Re-Animator, surrounding it with whimsical strings, bells, and light, airy melody. And that creepy motif is always around the corner, often accompanied by the choral voices (which often denote the tiny "troll' characters in the film). Soft, lingering drones and chimes flit amongst the strings and woodwinds, whirling piano that casts a surreal glow on everything else, creating this strange liminal space at the borders of the darker, more intense orchestrations, imperious brass, and eruptions of symphonic bombast. The atmosphere moves in strange directions, from threatening Hermann-style figures and deep percussive stabs, to accents of delicate feminine chorals, washes of lovely medeival-esque ambience (those harps just bring that kind of castle-n'-knight vibe, you know what I mean?), and back to the encroaching shadows. Band's combination of electronic elements and actual orchestral performances really stands out on this thing. Dreamy and disorienting, just like the bizarre environment that takes over the accursed apartment building at the story's center.

The brief " Cantos Profanae" is the real standout here, blending lovely, almost childlike feminine cooing emanating this aura of innocence, while all around her are these maniacal male and female voices repeating these weirdly incoherent, seemingly blasphemous chants (the lyrics sung in a mixture of Latin, English and Gaelic) - yeah, Band goes full weird here, almost Magma-esque for a brief moment, and it's spectacular, building to an apocalyptic crescendo. Indeed, Richard Band himself considers this one of his personal favorite top 5 scores, and just based on what he did with “Cantos Profanae", I concur. These pieces deftly meld a menacing playfulness with soaring, fantastical flights of symphonic wonder, and downright creepy use of choral voices, a combination that I don't think I've heard in any of his other film scores. I still think it stands up as one of the finest 80's fantasy-film scores from the low-budget realm. Sweet and sinister.

Both gatefold LP (on 180 gram vinyl) and CD editions feature brand new liner notes from the composer. The LP is a real deluxe job, in gatefold packaging with an obi strip.