Scoring his first major feature film, young composer Carlos José Alvarez impresses with the stylish maturity and elegant orchestral writing of a gifted professional. Born of Cuban immigrants, Alvarez is also an accomplished percussionist, but the score for Deadline is very much focused on long melodic lines, beautiful string writing and a very strong sense of atmosphere. Rather than hitting every dark note throughout the story (although there certainly are such moments as well), Alvarez gives this supernatural thriller an emotional quality that makes it shine among thriller and horror scores...

The soundtrack to Deadline is packed full of beautiful themes and atmospheric beats which will ensure that soundtrack fans will come back to it time and time again.

The 'Main Titles' gets everything off on the right note. This is a beautiful, and somewhat haunting theme which echoes throughout the album.

There were a few instances where this soundtrack seemed to be inspired by other composers work (for example 'Medication' sounded reminiscent of Maurice Jarre's music for Jacob's Ladder while 'The Drowning' and 'The Burial' reminded me of Howard Shore's work for The Silence of the Lambs) but the majority of this soundtrack is impressively original.

As debut soundtrack performances go, they don't get much better than this.

9

Darren Rea