Ahead of the release of DC Studios' new horror thriller Clayface (October 23 in the US, October 30 in Japan), the full picture of its music has arrived first. The score is by Volker Bertelmann, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for All Quiet on the Western Front. The soundtrack album from WaterTower Music runs 23 tracks, about 70 minutes, and is released digitally on October 16. The "Clayface Theme" had already been released as a lead single the Friday before.

The film is directed by James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil) and stars Tom Rhys Harries, with a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. A young man on the verge of Hollywood stardom has his face destroyed by a crime boss; an experimental treatment gives him his face back but costs him his sanity. It's the origin story of a Batman villain, and it is described as the new DC Universe's first R-rated film.

A "composer of quiet" takes on a DC monster

Bertelmann is known as Hauschka, a performer of the prepared piano, where objects placed on the strings transform its sound. In film—Lion (co-written with Dustin O'Halloran), All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave—he has consistently built tension through texture and silence rather than big melodies. His hammering, harmonium-based motif in All Quiet on the Western Front, used to express the inhumanity of the battlefield, is still fresh in memory.

Now that composer is writing a comic-book "monster." If the job is not a hero's fanfare but the sound of a person crumbling from the inside, it starts to look like the perfect choice. Director Watkins has said in a Japanese interview that he carefully rewatched Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and that he was strongly influenced by Godzilla Minus One in terms of the "emotional truth of the story." Portraying the monster as an emotional drama is a direction that is clearly audible from the music side as well.

The tracklist reads like a story about a face

Read the 23 titles in order and the skeleton of the story emerges.

  • "Pretty No More," "Mirror," "Your Face Changed"—losing his looks and facing the mirror
  • "Revenge Inside of You," "No Soft Story," "Not Fair"—vengeance growing inside
  • "Rebirth," "Help Me," "Leap of Faith"—"rebirth," and whatever lies beyond it, ruin or salvation

Tracks average about three minutes. The longest is "Help Me" at 5:11, the shortest "No Soft Story" at 1:16—a structure that stacks short cues to wear down the nerves. Meanwhile, a title that makes you look twice, "Maybe a Smoothie," runs a full 4:34. Perhaps it slowly seeps unease into an everyday conversation scene—it's a track that makes you want to check in the film itself.

Why a 1976 ballad right after the theme?

The album's biggest twist is track two. As soon as the 1:55 "Clayface Theme" ends, a cover of Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" (sung by Jasmine Jethwa) begins. For a score album, placing a non-original vocal track near the very start is a bold sequencing choice.

The sweet '70s soft-rock plea of "don't go" can be heard as a symbol of the protagonist's "former self," who dreamed of being loved in Hollywood. Placed right next to the ominous theme, its sweetness becomes eerie. It may be that the album's running order itself demonstrates what Bertelmann's scores do best: the coexistence of beauty and dread.

Two weeks until the Japanese release. Listen to the score before heading to the theater, or let it hit you for the first time in the film—either way, this roughly 70-minute sonic story about a "face" is one you'll want to revisit after the credits roll.