Website: Saw III
Link: Popcorn Junkies review of Saw III
Horror movies survive based on their ability to scare. For many, music is a key to creating suspense, mood, and manipulating the viewer. And what’s scarier than metal? Don’t answer that.
The folks behind Saw III — regardless of what you think of sequels — had the good sense to release a soundtrack appealing to the musical sensibilities of most metal fans. In fact, the soundtrack does exactly what the movie should: manipulate. By including radio-friendly bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, and Bullet For My Valentine among heavy-hitters like Mastodon, Slayer, and Meshuggah, it’s pure marketing brilliance. For the kids picking up the disc because of the names they recognize, they’ll hopefully be suckered into the deeper, darker sides of metal. Then you have the old-hat metalheads who can’t resist buying a soundtrack with so many of their favorite bands. If anything, the scene itself should be excited for the soundtrack to Saw III as it recognizes influence beyond Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd, seemingly insisting that the darker and more complex offerings should be the ones in the mainstream instead.
Opening with “This Calling” by All That Remains, the mood is set. There’s a clear highlight in Lamb of God’s “Walk With Me In Hell,” but plenty of other tracks hold their own alongside it. Not to mention the contributions of veterans Ministry and Helmet, despite being stylistic different from most of the other artists. Static-X and Drowning Pool bring unreleased tracks to the table, with the former being stronger than the latter, but both deserving a star. A chunk of the disc is hampered by soundalike hardcore-influenced American metal, not to mention the gratingly clear naughty-word censorship of Eighteen Visions, but none of it is bad so much as indistinguishable. Being a soundtrack of twenty songs, it’s expected inevitable filler.
Unless you’re a big Static-X or Drowning Pool fan, if you own all of the albums by the bands on the disc that you love, there’s no seemingly immediate need to grab the soundtrack to Saw III. But if you have any sort of curiosity as to what’s going on in the world of US metal or are looking to upgrade your newbie friends, there hasn’t been a sampler yet that compares to the diversity and quality of this disc.
