Brad FiedelTerminator 2: Judgement DayReview

The re-appearance of the T2 soundtrack (originally released on Varèse Sarabande in 1991) prompts the question: whatever happened to its composer, Brad Fiedel?

A one-time keyboard player for Hall and Oates, in the decade from 1984 following the release of The Terminator, Fiedel looked a sure bet for a long and prominent career scoring big-budget films. But within four years of T2’s release, Fiedel had fled the movie house for the more domestic confines of TV.

His disenchantment with film may have had something to do with the reception that greeted the announcement that he was to return to scoring duties for T2. Musical cineastes reacted at the time with scepticism and concern, as if Fiedel’s slicing, metallic-edged, brutally onomatopoeic signature was somehow inappropriate for über-director James Cameron’s dystopian vision of a world threatened by militaristic machines. (Even so, Fiedel’s return was a considerably less curious proposition than Danny Elfman being signed to score 2009’s Terminator Salvation.)

From the reprise of the ominously braying five-note main theme, he takes the tone of his original score down by several degrees to squat on and scurry around a glacial, orchestrally deracinated landscape, while also raising its already turbulent temperament to a feverish delirium in the cacophonous set pieces.

There is something appropriately morbid about the relentless, rhythmically manic insistence of Fiedel’s clashing, clattering collision between intimidating electronic whine and screech and blocks of pounding percussion. If anything, it sounds like musique concrete being pummelled and shattered to dust. Even the few moments of respite seem to hunker forlornly under low-lying leaden skies.

With hindsight, T2 emerges as an almost faultless soundtrack, exhaustingly bombastic and ear-splittingly uncompromising as it is. Instead of expanding on the original, Fiedel boils it down, distilling it into a concentrated, metal-clad clenched fist that pounds furiously away with nightmarish intent. As a threnody for the catastrophic events it accompanies, Fiedel’s score is a coruscating cinematic masterpiece.

It’s not an easy listen, by any means, but its sheer conviction and willingness to pursue so intense a musical idea – one that vehemently refuses to be diluted by harmonic warmth – makes the soundtrack to T2 all the more compelling.