Words by Amon Warmann

2021 has already been a good year for Tom Holkenborg. With Godzilla vs. Kong and the 4 hour 20-minute behemoth that is Zack Snyder’s Justice League, he’s provided the scores for two of the most talked-about blockbusters in recent months. With three more films already slated for release in 2022 and a YouTube channel that is continuing to thrive, it’s clear that the former DJ-turned-composer is not planning to rest on his laurels any time soon.

Holkenborg’s latest credit has him teaming up with Snyder once again for Netflix’s action-horror flick Army of the Dead. When we caught up with him at his home in Los Angeles via Zoom, he explained how he zeroed in on the movie’s core themes, the pressure he felt when working on the Snyder Cut, the story behind the incredible ‘Brothers in Arms’ from Mad Max: Fury Road, and much more.  

Army of the Dead is your sixth collaboration with Zack Snyder. How did this project differ from the others?

This one was great because all the other movies that we worked on featured extremely iconic characters. Superman, Batman, all the Justice League characters, even 300: Rise of an Empire was obviously a continuation of the first 300, which is also based on Frank Miller’s comics from the ’80s. With Army of the Dead, everything is new. Zack made up the story. He created the characters. And it’s so refreshing to work on something that is just new and doesn't have any roots in the past. There are not 100 years of history following you into these characters. So it's really great.

I got the script in March 2018. Zack was saying to me what he wanted to do and asked me if I had any ideas. I said let's not do an orchestral score and he said, thank God! We had both come off a string of these really big epic scores, and so we wanted to do something that is smaller in nature and more claustrophobic, with more of an original approach to things. He was halfway through the shoot when I visited him in Albuquerque, and I brought one or two things with me that I was working on. One of them is the theme that is on the score, which is ‘Scott and Kate’. I played it to him and he got really emotional when he listened to it. He was like, this is great! So the approach to the score at first was actually way more emotional than the typical horror score.

So you started work on this score before they had even started shooting?

Yeah. I was on set in Albuquerque where they were shooting for a couple of days, and when they were back in LA that's when I played them the version of ‘Viva Las Vegas’ that opens the movie. When they went back to finish the movie, I already had big chunks of the movie because the picture editor was working at the same time as they were shooting. So by the time they finished the movie, I had the full movie and a lot of the scenes were scored. Contrary to what I've been reading online, I had finished this movie completely by January, February in 2020. That was way before I started on Justice League. Even Godzilla vs. Kong was almost completely finished in November 2019. 

When you start a project, what's your go-to instrument? Are you more of a guitar guy, or do you head straight to the computer?

It’s a bit of everything. Sometimes you start with the computer. With Mad Max, I actually started by sitting behind a drum kit and just coming up with the signature rhythms. The first thing that I came up with was the cue that became ‘Spikey Cars’ on the soundtrack. The second thing I came up with was the guitar riff. With Black Mass, I started by experimenting with synthesizers. The sound that I came up with became one of the signature sounds throughout the entire score. With Army of the Dead, I started sound designing first until I had the instruments with the sound that I wanted. And then I started writing the theme for ‘Scott and Kate’ on that piano sound that I created.

Sometimes, you just think about melodies for so long in your head. I had the opening for the Justice League theme in my head, and I was constantly walking around in my neighbourhood singing the theme. Eventually, after a week or so, I found how to continue the theme. And when I found that, that's when I ran to the computer and quickly drew in all the nodes for the melodies. I need to record it quickly once I have it because if I don’t, it's like cigarette smoke. It's gone. So while they all end the same – at the end of a project every score needs to be mixed or orchestrated – there are various different ways I can start scoring.

Once you've completed a project, do you delete all those initial voice memos? Or do you still have all those initial ideas on your phone?

Of course, I keep that shit! People think that composers that are successful are these machines that are like tanks that keep rolling at full speeds. We're human beings. We have writer's blocks. There are days that I get up in the morning, and it's like fuck, not today. So you save all these ideas for a rainy day when you have absolutely no inspiration. Even all the great classical composers have done that. They would always have little sheets of paper they would scribble on. There are stories of really famous symphonies that are now being looked back on as masterpieces that sometimes took 10-15 years to come together because the guy could not figure out how to continue. So it’s great to keep all these ideas.

But the things I cannot use are the ones that are so close to what the score became. I have at least 40 different versions of the Justice League theme on my phone, and eventually one became the theme. But the other 39 are so close to what it became. They're great for a ‘Studio Time’ episode. I usually show the initial demo that I sent to the director, and then I fast forward to the end of the episode to see what it became, so people can see the development from start to finish.

The heart of Army of the Dead is Scott (Dave Bautista) and his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell). Scott is the lead of the movie, but rather than have a singular theme for him you pair these characters together. What was the starting point for that musically?

For me, there are four major characters in the movie - Scott, and Kate, as well as Zeus and Athena. What connects these four people is the agony of losing someone that you love. With Zeus and Athena, it's the unborn child, and Zeus losing his wife. With Scott and Kate, it's the Mum. The core of the theme of Athena is the strong, emotional response to missing your wife who is pregnant with your kids. And with Scott and Kate, it's a disruptive relationship between the two of them because Scott had to kill her Mum and his wife when she turned into a zombie. 

I like how the voicework in Army of the Dead oscillates between peaceful and eerie.

I consider myself to be a spiritual person. And for me, it was like the Mum that became a zombie and died is looking out for her daughter and her husband. So it's like the voice of comfort, saying it's all gonna work out. But then there's always that eeriness in there that underscores the uncomfortable relationship that Scott and Kate have with each other, and the uncomfortableness that they have to live with the fact that Mum is not here, and that she had a gruesome death. It’s the same with the Zeus and Athena theme. It has a zombie version of ethereal beauty in it, but also the sheer danger of what these creatures are capable of.

Battle Hallway feels like it’s the track that takes your musical history into account and sees you express your fullest self because it transitions between so many different styles.

The first part of ‘Battle Hallway’ is the calling card of Zeus. It's not even a theme, but it's definitely recognizable. Every time we see Zeus and you hear that sound, you know shit is gonna go down. So the first part of the battle is a percussive piece. But the second part is where it gets interesting for me, because that's where we get the suspense, and it almost feels like more of a horror score. One of the sounds that you’re hearing on that track are trees breaking.

When I think about zombies, the image of a halfway broken neck comes to mind. So I asked the sound designer if he had any cool sounds for neck breaks, and the few that he sent over weren't really what I was looking for. Eventually, I found a YouTube video of somebody who was walking through the forest. It was snowing really heavily and these YouTubers were filming the landscape. During that shot when they were walking into the forest, some of these trees started breaking. The sound it made was ridiculous, and I've never heard anything like it in real life. So I used sounds like that and created drum kits out of it which are being used in that second part. Then a really uncomfortable tension builds, and these big chords come in. Along with ‘Scott and Kate’ and ‘Zeus and Athena’, ‘Battle Hallway’ was the most fun to work on because it set the template for the movie.

Do you have a preference when it comes to when you start work on a project? With Army of the Dead, you started before it even started shooting. But with the Snyder Cut, you saw it all before you started.

There are three moments to step into a movie. One is when you start working on the music before the movie is even starting to shoot, which is what happened with Army of the Dead. This is what Ennio Morricone always did with Sergio Leone, and their relationship is known for that. I also did this with Zach in 2016 when he was shooting Justice League Scenario number two is when you come in four to five months before the movie comes to a close, which means the movie is shot and you can see the first Director's Cut of it. You start working to that cut, but there are always picture changes that you have to workaround. I would say the majority of the film scores are exactly this. The third possibility is what I call an emergency score, which is when something is wrong with what they currently have and they call on a composer like me to fix it in four or five weeks. I’ve done it on a few movies like Black Mass, and 300: Rise of an Empire... I had already written a couple of things for it and I saw him in England at the shoot and played him some stuff. I've also been doing this with George Miller. I'm currently working on another project with him, and the two main themes were completely written before they started shooting. 

Your score for Zack Snyder’s Justice League is 4 hours and 20 minutes long. That’s rare. I imagine there are lots of benefits to being able to score that much music for a single film project… but did you discover any drawbacks?

There are many drawbacks, but they're not drawbacks that cannot be overcome. It just means that it's extremely taxing on your system mentally. And physically, it's really intense to deliver a four-and-a-half-hour score. A normal two-hour movie usually has between 80 and 85 minutes of score on average. Sometimes that’s really hard to handle, especially when it gets to the end where you have to record everything with an orchestra and mix everything and deliver all the stems. The man-hours that you need to pull in those scenarios are insane. 

If I work on a movie like Tomb Raider, I'm working with a director, I work with producers, and I work with Warner Brothers as a studio as a team. The goal is to realise the vision of the director, and everyone has a lot of great ideas. I love it. With Justice League, it was just me and Zack. Not only was there a massive petition happening to get the Snyder Cut released, but there was a secondary petition that had fans that wanted to get the score released. So when we found out that this movie is being greenlit, there was a massive weight on Zack’s shoulder to make sure that this thing was actually the real fucking deal. I felt that same weight. Zack really didn't really have to say anything to me. He knew that I would step up to the game and deliver the absolute best score that I have in me, even if I have to grab it from my fucking toes. 

It's an advantage that with four and a half hours you can write longer themes, you can expose more music, you can do more thematic development. The downside is that you have to then fucking do it. It seems like writing really long themes is almost like a forgotten art. These days there are themes in film scores that are maybe four seconds long. The reason for that is because sometimes there is no more space to play with because after four seconds a bomb goes off and you will not hear the continuation of the melody. But in this movie, there is a lot of space, and Zack said to me that the music will drive this four-and-a-half-hour movie and not the sound effects. And he did that because when you play the movie it's amazing how loud the music is compared to some other action movies that come out. That is great, but that also means that every second of that score better be fucking good, because you cannot hide behind sound effects and such. So your orchestrations need to be top-notch, your programming needs to be top-notch, your everything needs to be top-notch. 

Plus Warner Brothers said we're going to release the whole score when you're done. So you cannot hide behind cues that were not so great. A soundtrack is usually a selection of what the composer thinks is best. Usually, the majority of the soundtrack score CD is not actually in the movie, but I only left 12 minutes out. When the score came out it was like a warm bath that I fell in. What a worldwide response! The soundtrack CD was number one in the world and a bestseller for six days. I sold more than Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift for five days. I mean, come on... I'm a film composer, I'm not an artist! It was great.

You get to see these epic moments in the Snyder Cut, Godzilla vs. Kong, and other films before there’s any music to it. Do you ever take a moment for yourself to appreciate what you’re watching or do you immediately get to work? 

I'm a fanboy like yourself. The first comic I grew up with was Tarzan. And the second comic that I read was Kong. I discovered Godzilla when I was 16. Basically, you would watch some of the 60’s or 70’s versions of King Kong with your buddies when you got stoned, and laugh your ass off. So I started collecting all these Godzilla movies. I have all 36 of them. So when I got approached to do Godzilla vs. Kong, I was like you gotta be kidding me! So every time you watch a movie for the first time, you’re not thinking about music. At that point, you're just taking it in. The thing is... this is the problem. This is another drawback of film scoring. I will never be able to see a finished product. I only see the work in progress, and I can only see a movie for the first time once. So the first time you need to be blown away to get the inspiration that you need to deliver the film score. 

So when I saw the four-hour Snyder Cut for the very first time, it's nothing like what you guys saw. You guys see all the CGI. I see a guy in a gray suit with a prop. I see Wonder Woman just standing there jumping up and down because she just landed from a flight. I need to fantasise about that. When you see Justice League close to 150-200 times in a period of nine months, it's hard to stay fresh, it's hard to stay objective, it's hard to say this can be better or that can be better. 

It's one of the things I had to learn the most when I got into film scoring because when I had my artist's career in the ’90s and 2000s, I would watch a film, and I would see what a composer did and be like, I can do that! But I was just judging the finished product. Little did I know that you have to work in a team and that it’s a nine-month process of rewrites, doing notes, and re-conceptualizing the score, and re-editing all your music. At a certain point on Mad Max, I had worked on it for 18 months. At the end of that, I could not listen to my own shit anymore. I was tired of it. And you still need to listen to it. Can I do this better? Can I do that better? Is there something I can do here? It's very tough, but it can be overcome. It's not a problem. It's a challenge.

Speaking of Mad Max, Brothers in Arms is one of my favourite tracks. When it came time to write that part of the score, what did George Miller say to you?

I did like 10 original cues to the scene. And every time George said no Tom, I'm not feeling it. And I said okay, you know what, I'm going to switch the movie off. And I'm just going to make a piece of music that captures the collaboration between Tom and Charlize's characters for the first time. He said, okay, maybe that's an idea. I was in a bad mood because he would not approve of anything that I did. There were actually two scenes like that: one was for Furiosa in the desert when she talks to the many mothers. The other one was this. 

I got frustrated, and then I didn't work for 14 days or so. It was such a long project that I could do that. And then I said OK, I think I have an idea. I still hadn't seen the movie. I forgot what the rhythm of the scene was and what tempo it should be. I was just banging around on the guitar like oh, that would be great. I had a melody in my head and I came up with these chords and started arranging them. And then I just remember sending the mp3 to George, and he said wow, what a powerful piece, I really want to see that to picture. I was in my little studio in Sydney at the time, and so we met in the studio and my music editor was with me. He just lines the beginning of the track up with the beginning of the scene, and everything was playing beautifully. George was like, you did it! And he gave me a big hug. It was so great. 

I spoke to Emile Mosseri a while back and he told me how he trades in the piano he uses after each score and gets a new one to help unlock new music. I know you recently sold all of your inventory and refurbished your studio with new gear. Are you finding that it’s had a similar effect? Has it reinvigorated you in any way?

Unlocking new sounds is part of it because I got rid of old vintage gear. Getting rid of something that was a part of your life for so long is liberating. It felt like I was climbing a hill with a backpack that had 15 heavy stones on it. All of a sudden somebody said hey, let me grab that backpack from you! It was great. And because of that, you get new ideas. In regards to the composer that you mentioned who uses a different piano with each score, I would potentially do the same thing if I were a pianist. But I don't consider myself a pianist at all. I'm the worst fucking piano player on the planet. Maybe you can find one or two that are worse than me, but you have to really look. I see the piano purely as a tool to slap shit into my sequencer. For me, the magic starts with all the synths that I have creating sounds, my drum kit, all my percussion, my bass guitars, my other guitars, and some of these other really exotic instruments. That's why when you asked how do I start a film score, I’m taking turns with all these instruments. I would get bored if every film I scored had to start with a guitar, or had to start with a drum kit. Sometimes I hate percussion, and I don't want to even look at it. And then after a while, I’ll be like oh, let's sit behind my drum kit.  

You mentioned your ‘Studio Time’ videos earlier. I really love what you’ve done with your YouTube channel. What’s been the most unexpected blessing of the community that you’ve helped foster?

Everything is a blessing. It's like a way to give back to the community. It actually takes some time and money to do this on a yearly basis, but we do it without sponsoring. It's a labour of love for everybody that works on it. And it's not just me - it’s really a team of three to five people that on a yearly basis are consistently maintaining the channel. I'm just responsible for the content.

The warm comments that we got...there were a couple of people that wrote to us who are in Antarctica. There’s a research team there, and two of them are modular nerds who have been watching my studio times. There’s a lot of fans from Iraq, Persia, Africa, a lot of fans in South America, especially Sao Paulo, Brazil, a lot of Asian people, a lot of people in Russia, Scandinavian people. I’m from Holland so there's a strong base there, and a lot of English composers are following me as well. It's such a worldwide thing. The internet can be a cesspool of hate, and in comparison to some of the other channels my channel is filled with a lot of enthusiasm, and people helping each other out. It’s really great.