| American Outlaws |
| Composed by Trevor Rabin |
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Arranged by Trevor Rabin Produced by Trevor Rabin, Paul Linford, and Steve Kempster Release Date: 2001 |
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My first real taste of Trevor Rabin’s composing abilities was with the disaster film (which was a disaster) Armageddon. While I generally like those testosterone-laden, electronically beefed-up Media Ventures scores, Armageddon just didn’t seem to offer anything for me to enjoy, not even coming close to the delightfully over-the-top score to The Rock. Rabin’s music fared much better with Remember the Titans, a film which I greatly enjoyed and a score I found to be quite interesting, even though it was still firmly within the typical style we've all come to expect (be that good or bad). With Rabin’s American Outlaws, that style is taken into a new direction that is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it has turned out to be a blending that I found to be quite entertaining. That genre is, of course, The West. When it comes to scoring Western-style films, the names generally looked to are those such as Ennio Morricone and Elmer Bernstein. Surely no one gives the first thought to Hans Zimmer or any of his crew. But with American Outlaws, Trevor Rabin takes the Media Ventures sound and applies it to a genre that some hold as sacred. With that in mind, I fully understand that there will be some who view this score as a horrible sacrilegious travesty. As for myself, I decided to allow myself to be open to what Rabin was trying to mold together, and enjoy it for what it is. What this score really has going for it is its rousing main theme. It hits the listener from the outset of the first track and while Rabin makes good use of it, it never gets too repetitive. The album primarily consists of the action cues that make up the score, though the quieter moments are arranged nicely to help break the music and provide a nice overall flow. The cues are mainly short with the longest run coming in at a little over four minutes, though the music never feels like it is simply a collection of tracks. Honestly, without the pounding main theme or the Media Ventures style of scoring, this would be a mostly bland score, and even with everything else thrown in, it’s not much better than the average Zimmerite score. Still, with American Outlaws, Rabin has provided a fun little score that will please most fans of those type of scores. ***1/2 |
| Track Listing - Total Running Time: 35:57 | |
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