Mortal Kombat
More Kombat (TVT)
by Joshua Brown
Big budget movie, big budget music. More Kombat is a corollary to the original, highly successful soundtrack to Mortal Kombat. Both compilations are a meeting ground for techno and metal. Computer-generated sound has helped to revive metal in the ’90s. One could convincingly argue that electronic music has already moved far beyond the trappings of anything that heavy metal has to offer, but the fusion of the two has produced some credible, though certainly not revolutionary, material. A couple of the songs on this comp could find their way into your typical rave set, like Alien Factory‘s “Higher,” and “Come2Gether” by the already much-respected Crystal Method. The Crystal Method might seem out of place here to fans of their hyped-up trip hop, but their inclusion works surprisingly well in context.
More Kombat does have its share of klunkers, like God Lives Underwater, whose slacker vocals only take away from the cyber-Apocalypse vibe, and the ever-pretentious Sister Machine Gun, whose vocoder effects can’t hide the fact that they’re a second-rate pop-metal act. On the other hand, two older and seminal bands, Killing Joke and Sepultura, are in top form. Sepultura’s “Chaos B.C.” is a neato remix of their over-the-top, piledriving anthem “Chaos A.D.,” and the sequencing and cut-up beats amplify the brutality of the original. Killing Joke, whose sound paved the way for everyone from Ministry to Nirvana, set a sped-up trance rhythm to their epic and abrasive, guitar-driven “Drug.” A heavy, Goth-oriented set might welcome the likes of Godrun Gut and Babylon Zoo, and cyber-metalheads should have no trouble rocking out to Chemlab and Cubanate. A few of the tracks were obviously written for the movie, and are only novelty items without the film as a backdrop, such as Juno Reactor‘s “The Journey Kontinues,” Loaded‘s “Fatality,” and Psykosonik‘s “It Has Begun.” Also in the film-only category is G//Z/R‘s “Outworld,” which features Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, and adds a fresh new spin on sword-and-sorcery heavy metal when the annoying vocals aren’t getting in the way.
