Independent film is one of the great breeding grounds for new film composers. Consider Hans Zimmer, for example, who started his career scoring direct-to-video films before eventually securing eleven Academy Award nominations. While these films don’t offer the same monetary benefit as their big-budget counterparts, they offer something else: artistic freedom. Liberated from the confines of the studio system, composers are given much more freedom to create in the way they feel best represents the film. ‘Dry Blood’ is no different, an ultra-low-budget horror film giving creative license to long time band and first-time film composer System Syn.
System Syn eschews the growing trend of purely discordant noise so common in modern horror, instead approaching the score very much in the same vein as some 70s and 80s horror – with slow, piano-driven themes. System Syn’s piano floats in the background of the film like a detached haunting presence, building up a heavy and psychologically strangling atmosphere. At times it’s reminiscent of the music in the Silent Hill games or from funeral doom stalwarts like Nortt, where a lingering, mournful piano melody cuts through the atmosphere like the light of a lighthouse shining through a foggy night sky, promising salvation and instead delivering dread and despair.
It’s a shame, then, that System Syn’s score is often buried in the audio mix, as it’s far and away the best part of ‘Dry Blood.’ In fact, this is one of the rare times where more music would be a benefit to the film. Hopefully ‘Dry Blood’ becomes the jumping off point for System Syn’s career in film music, as so many other indie films have launched the careers of past film composers.
Check the score out now on Bandcamp.