Brendon Small. // photo credit Jim Donnelly Writer/actor/director/musician/et al Brendon Small would be a legend if he’d stopped with the creation of his Adult Swim animated series, Home Movies, in the early ’00s. Following it up with the heavy metal fantasy comedy of Metalocalypse secured that status for all time when it debuted in 2006. Spotlighting the death metal band Dethklok, whose popularity makes them the seventh-largest economy in the world, Metalocalypse managed to skewer the music industry as effectively as Spinal Tap while also being a wild ride into interpersonal relationships, w ..read more

Composer Emile Mosseri has, in his short career scoring feature films, worked on some very notable productions. He scored director/producer Joe Talbot's debut, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, has worked with Miranda July on Kajillionaire, and also tackled the second season of the Amazon series, Homecoming. His latest score is for Lee Isaac Chung's Minari, a drama about a Korean American family trying to make their way as farmers in rural Arkansas, and is nominated for an Academy Award. All of these might be very different films, but Mosseri's scores for each help define the world in whic ..read more

Playing bass was love at first pluck for Marty Isenberg. His career as a jazz musician began at the age of 12, after losing his father to cancer the year prior. A skilled amateur musician, Marty’s father kept many instruments around the house that he would play for the family. After his death, Marty would pull one of these instruments off the wall and begin teaching himself how to play by reading tablature in Bass Player Magazine. The first song he ever learned was “My Own Summer” by The Deftones. Playing bass was love at first pluck for Mr. Isenberg. It was a cathartic healing experience, a ..read more

Acclaimed multi-disciplinary music masters in their own right, Benji Merrison and Will Slater are now creating sounds for the screen together, calling upon their collective experience from a music and arts education, work producing and touring records, as well as composing for Film and Television. Both from the Midlands, UK, their paths first aligned when they were commissioned as a duo to score the popular BBC David Attenborough series Dynasties in 2018, for which they received nominations from the IFMCA and News and Documentary Emmys. In December 2020, global audiences were charmed by Meerka ..read more

As a boy growing up in Boston, Jon Coco immersed himself in the music of timeless bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Pink Floyd. Tapping into the music of the ‘70s with an impressive vinyl record collection, he started writing original music and dove into performances in the late ‘80s Boston music scene. Invited by an A&M recording studio head engineer to record songs for A&M, Coco gave in to the eventual lure of Los Angeles and the larger opportunities it promised. An early lesson would come when A&M Records closed their doors while his band was still record ..read more

The HBO Max series, Peacemaker, the spin-off from director James Gunn's The Suicide Squad has become a massive hit for the streaming service, and not a small amount of its popularity comes from its deft use of music. However, while much as been made of the series' use of under-the-radar or forgotten rock 'n' roll and hair metal, composer Kevin Kiner's work on the series, alongside Clint Mansell, helps set the tone for a show which is by turns outrageous, violent, and surprisingly introspective and thoughtful. Ahead of the Peacemaker series finale, we spoke with Kiner about his work on the ser ..read more

Formed in 2013 in Toronto, Martin Macphail, Dean Rode and Tristan Tarr make up the award winning trio Blitz//Berlin. Since releasing their debut album Distance in 2015, the band has created three critically acclaimed instrumental albums, and composed the original score to feature films, shorts, and movie trailers, including the recent sci-fi horror comedy, Psycho Goreman. Blitz//Berlin's music for films like The Void, and the trailer for Bad Times at the El Royale, show just how diverse the trio's music can be, so it was a real joy to talk about all of this -- but especially Psycho Goreman ..read more

Pronounced “Voyager 3,” Detroit’s Voyag3r feature keyboardist Steve Greene, guitarist Aaron Greene, and drummer Greg Mastin. Inspired by the soundtracks to vintage horror, action, and sci-fi films, the trio creates experimental rock that owes a debt to pioneers like John Carpenter and shares a kinship with bands such as Trans Am, Teeth of the Sea, and Zombi. Originally directed by and starring martial arts actor John Liu (The Secret Rivals, Invincible Armor) in his only American production, New York Ninja was filmed entirely on 35mm in 1984, but the project was abandoned during production res ..read more

On this episode, we continue our series, Your Favorite Soundtrack, where we talk to our favorite people about the soundtracks they love. Our latest installment features Katlyn Conroy of Cheery and Dooms, talking about the soundtrack to the 1974 film, Phantom of the Paradise. You can purchase Dooms’ Shellshine via High Dive Records. Tracklist: Paul Williams, "Phantom's Theme (Beauty And The Beast)" The Undead, "Somebody Super Like You (Beef Construction Song)" Dooms, "number's up" Paul Williams, "The Hell Of It ..read more

Director Matt Hinton's documentary, Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury, has a couple of very interesting wrinkles. Not only is the Georgia post-punk band an act you've likely not heard of, the reunited act now features three members who are Eastern Orthodox priests, and director Hinton is part of the band, as well. That's before you get into the fact that Luxury is an often-forgotten part of the early history of Christian label Tooth & Nail Records, or the terrible accident which almost ended the lives of the band members. It's a fascinating story, filled with music you're s ..read more