Primal Rage
Released by CD Baby, 2018
38 Tracks with a Total Running Time of 62 min.
Original Music Score by Ceiri Torjussen

In the first few minutes of the opening track, it will give you a perfect example of what to expect from the rest of his hour long score. And that is simply atmosphere. This doesn’t have any melodies, songs, or anything like that. But what it does to make up for that is giving us raw audible emotions. Just in this first track, we start off with a low rumbling that gets a little louder as we go, as if something dark or evil is off in the distance, but moving towards us. But by the end of that track we switch to a simple but beautiful bit of piano. No tune or anything but just a few notes that really change the effect.

Of course, as soon as we hit the next track, Big Footprint, we’re right back where we were, with that rumbling becoming louder and more pronounced. With the use (of what I think is) a lot of string instruments, Torjussen creates a lot of tension and surprises, as well as just creating a sense of uneasiness, as if something is about to jump out at you. There are also moments where the pace picks up quite a bit, accelerating your pulse, as if you were actually running from whatever just started chasing you!

There are also several parts when Torjussen seems to be having a lot of creative fun using god only knows what kind of instruments or devices to create some of the sounds that he does. A perfect example of that is in the track Big Mouth or whatever is going on in the background of track The Oh-Ma tracks. I really liked this and had me listening to it over and over again trying to figure out just what the hell that was!

For a score that has no melodies or “music” per say, it really must build and develop those moods, feelings, and atmosphere with their sounds. And I think Torjussen does an exceptional job here with this one. For someone that likes traditional musical scores for a movie, I really enjoy it when a composer can give me some strange and different sounds that do the same as a melody, in creating a feeling or mood, whether it is to build tension or just create a moody feeling. And Torjussen has done just that.