This month, the Mental Jukebox revisits the movie soundtracks of the nineties. The music I’m highlighting are some of my personal favorites. In many cases, the movies themselves were huge for me as well. But the focus will still be on the music – as always. Let’s bring on the throwback classics, the grunge, the gangsta rap, and the indie gems. #31DaysOf90sMovieSongs
Movie: The Crow
The Crow’s dark underworld found the right musical counterparts in its soundtrack from top to bottom. With contributions from dark, edgy bands, the songs spanned the musical spectrum — from The Cure to Henry Rollins to Rage Against the Machine. The track list reads like a college radio playlist. And one of my favorites is the Nine Inch Nails’ cover of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls”. It’s pretty ballsy to cover Joy Division. If you’re gonna do it, you better sure as hell nail it. And nail it NIN sure did.
The Crow comic books have been known to find inspiration from Joy Division, making the inclusion of “Dead Souls” that much more powerful. Just as the movie brought a new element to the original stories and images, Nine Inch Nails found a way to reinvent the Joy Division song with its own unique musical sensibilities. While Joy Division took to the upper registers with Hooky’s bass lines high up on the fretboards and Ian Curtis’ spastic vocal tremors, NIN found a home in the lower registers, with cyclical bass drum beats, grating electric guitar riffs and Trent Reznor’s tormented chants. It’s a thing of beauty in its own dark way rather than try to be Ian Curtis 2.0.
“Someone take these dreams away that point me to another day.”