Varèse Sarabande reissue Marco Beltrami's score from Hellboy (2004) on vinyl exclusively through Barnes & Noble. The movie is based on Mike Mignola's acclaimed comic book series about a creature from Hades who joins the battle against evil. A young demon is summoned from the depth of Hell to be used as the ultimate Axis weapon in the 1940’s. However, the demonic creature is captured by American forces, and put in the care of Professor Broom, the founder of a top-secret organization called the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Sixty years later, the demon, now known as Hellboy, is part of an elite secret defense team alongside Liz Sherman, a beautiful pyrokinetic, and Abe Sapian, an aquatic humanoid with the power of telepathy...

Marco Beltrami delivers a score that feels like a combination of the best movie soundtracks of the '80s. There's the occasional nod to the work of John Williams and Danny Elfman, but this is unmistakably Beltrami through and through.

The score contains 20 tracks (45 min) and is pretty much a textbook example of how to write a soundtrack that not only works incredibly well in the film, but acts as a beautiful standalone album too.

The album is available on either red vinyl (from the Varèse Sarabande store) or supernatural blue/black smoke vinyl (from Barnes & Noble's website). If you already have the score (there's still a deluxe 2 CD disc collection available from the Varèse Sarabande store) it's still worth buying the vinyl for coolness factor alone, not to mention how the listening experience is always different on vinyl.

Still one of Beltrami's greatest works.

10

Darren Rea