Composer Bear McCreary on How Metal Became His Gateway for Other Musical Exploration

Emmy Award-winning composer Bear McCreary loves music that goes big. He certainly spans a wide range of dynamics and styles in the scoring work he does for film, TV, and video games, but he revels in compositions that are larger than life. His recent concept album/graphic novel The Singularity allowed him to dive deep into the world of heavy metal, mixing in orchestral sounds and embarking on musical adventures that were not tied into someone else’s cinematic experience. Rather, it was a story created out of his music and the collaborative mind of comic book writer Mat Groom. It’s his first solo album—one which features heavy rock luminaries like Slash, Joe Satriani, Corey Taylor, Buck Dharma, and Serj Tankian—and it reveals more about his musical personality and allows him to indulge in some metal euphoria.

Removing the Restraints

“The funny thing about my solo record is even when I’m doing [the film soundtrack to] Godzilla: King of the Monsters, I am having to restrain myself,” McCreary explains to American Songwriter. “I want to go bigger than this, and I am putting the borders on to make this fit in this movie. With The Singularity, there are no borders, and I think that is where the overlap with a lot of the metal musicians and hard rock musicians [comes in]. Music is intense emotion. If I listen to a really good metal song and I’m listening to John Williams, it is the same in my mind. I hear it the same way. So I think a lot of these guys feel that way about their own music. It is very cinematic. That’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, but it’s true.”

It was during his tenure scoring Battlestar Galactica, which started in 2003, that McCreary underwent his metal conversion. He met Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian around that time and they went to dinner.

“He goes, ‘I know you. You’re a guy who loves Sepultura,’” McCreary recalls. “And I go, ‘What makes you say that?’ He goes, “I’ve heard Battlestar Galactica. I’m listening to those taiko drums. You’re a guy who loves Sepultura.’ And I was like, ‘Cool, man.’ I went home and listened to Sepultura, and I was like, ‘Scott Ian knows me better than I know myself.’ Here’s Brazilian folk percussion and these riffs that are sick as hell. I love this.”

Sepultura are on McCreary’s list of favorite metal bands, as are System of a Down. “I’m really into Gojira,” he added. “I just saw them a couple weeks ago, and it sounds like movie music to me. I was so happy for them. I was happy for metal itself when they played the Paris Olympics opening ceremony last summer. They’ve been a big influence on me.”

Unusual Gateway

An unexpected gateway to metal for McCreary, he says, was Dethklok, the fictional group created for the satirical Cartoon Network animated series Metalocalypse that released four albums and became an actual touring group, sharing stages with the likes of Mastodon, Machine Head, and Babymetal. Dethklok’s third album Dethalbum III hit No. 10 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in 2012. The show ran between 2006 and 2013 and was beloved by many metalheads, and the drummer for Dethklok (in studio and on the road) is iconic thrasher Gene Hoglan, who was show creator/musician Brendon Small’s initial collaborator.

“I [then] discovered Strapping Young Lad, Gene Hoglan’s first band with Devin Townsend,” McCreary says. “It’s f–king genius. I keep discovering new bands and digesting what they have to offer. [Sepultura’s] Roots, that whole record is amazing. The title track—these roots, bloody roots—you’re blown away. What are the ingredients in that? You have this incredible metal band, a singer who’s doing the gravel voice scream, but he’s expressive. Then there’s room in the mix for the wild card. For them, the wild card is traditional Brazilian sounds. For me, it was movie music and floppy drives and gamelan and whatever else, but it did start me thinking that metal can pull in other sounds and coexist happily. That really is what the gateway was for me, that this genre can be a platform for even more expressive music.”

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