INFLUENCES: Spawn: The Album

Various Artists
Spawn: The Album
© 1997 Sony

The 1997 live-action Spawn was not a good movie. Whether or not you were a fan of McFarlane’s comics, the weak plot, flat characters, and—if you were a fan—the departures from the source material, was enough to render the movie a thorough disappointment. There were two areas, however, in which the movie excelled in two areas: the excellent visual effects and this soundtrack album.


I had already seen the movie by the time I stumbled across Spawn: The Album in a store; I vaguely remembered it having good music, but the weakness of the film itself was the stronger memory. I probably would have put the disc back on the shelf after first glace if it weren’t for the fact that it was the Australian limited edition, with cover art of Spawn¬—not the movie version—dressed as Santa. The chuckle I got out of that was enough to keep the disc in my hand long enough to give the track listing a look.

Whoever devised the concept for this soundtrack deserves a prize. Each track was a collaboration—whether a remix or original work—between a rock group and an electronic artist. At the time I had heard of a third, maybe half of these artists and counted some of them as favorites. I was intrigued and had a gift certificate, so I gave the album a chance and took it home.

Like most compilation-style soundtracks, not every song on this album was great. But almost every artist featured was. Over the following months, CDs from almost all of these artists found their way into my collection. In this way, Spawn: The Album defined a great deal of my musical tastes throughout tenth grade, with a few of the artists, such as Orbital, sticking around even longer as some of my all-time favorites.

Perhaps most importantly though, this album showed me a way of finding new music that was not dependant on word of mouth or the radio. I started buying compilations and soundtracks that grabbed my attention, sifting through them for gems and finding a wide range of new (at least, new to me) artists. I have long sense ceased to use this method; the internet makes finding parallel and related artists as easy as a clicks on Wikipedia and visits to bands’ MySpace pages. But back then, this process allowed me to establish a musical identity of my own, earning Spawn: The Album a permanent position as one of my major influences.

MP3: CD: