“Tonight we have special news for you: we closed all the exits. You can’t escape,” Claudio Simonetti deadpanned in his Italian accent to the enthusiastic crowd at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, Massachusetts on October 3. Clad in something like a ringmaster jacket over a Deadpool T-shirt, a smile beamed across the maestro’s face.
The audience erupted into laughter chased by cheers, as they knew they were about to experience something special: the 1985 cult classic Demons on the big screen with a live score performed by Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin, a modern tribute to the prolific Italian prog-rock composers Goblin fronted by the founding keyboardist.
Produced by Italian master of horror Dario Argento — for whom Goblin had previously composed several scores — Demons is directed by Lamberto Bava from a script written by Bava, Argento, Dardano Sacchetti (The Beyond), and Franco Ferrini (Phenomena). The plot finds attendees at a mysterious horror film screening trapped in a theater with ravenous, slime-spewing demons.
An 88-minute distillation of 1980s flamboyance, Demons is a perfect entry point into Italian horror for western audiences. It’s relentlessly paced with gnarly special effects, a colorful ensemble, and an outrageous finale that includes a motorcycle, a samurai sword, and a helicopter crash. Of course, Simonetti’s score is also a contributing factor to its efficacy.
Hearing Simonetti and his bandmates — guitarist Daniele Amador, bassist Cecilia Nappo, and drummer Federico Maragoni — accompany the film live added to the high-octane experience. While the live Suspiria score they toured last year was tweaked with a more modern sound, Demons remained largely faithful to Simonetti’s original score, albeit with a fuller sound from transposing the electronics to real instruments.
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin also played along to some of the heavy metal songs featured on the soundtrack. They extracted Biff Byford’s vocals to accompany them on their rendition of Saxon’s “Everybody Up,” and they replaced Accept’s “Fast as a Shark” with a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Flash of the Blade” featuring Bruce Dickinson’s vocals; a curious substitution, but it sounded good and the song appears in Argento’s Phenomena, so it fit the theme.
The live score alone was worth the price of admission, but the group followed it up with a 75-minute set of classic Goblin and Simonetti material along with some surprises. They opened with a few deep cuts — themes from Cut and Run and The Card Player as well as Goblin non-soundtrack song “E suono rock” — before launching into three tracks from Dawn of the Dead in tribute to George A. Romero.
In the middle of the set, Simonetti introduced special arrangements of songs from two of his favorite horror movies: Halloween and The Exorcist. The band put their spin on John Carpenter’s iconic theme, which seamlessly flowed into Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” while clips from the respective films play on the screen behind them.
They went on to play two cuts from Suspiria (“Suspiria” and “Markos”) and title themes from Opera (with a guitar solo by Amador), Tenebrae, and Phenomena (with a piano intro by Simonetti) before bringing the evening to a close with the Deep Red theme “Profondo Rosso.”
Simonetti informed me that, unlike Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead, and Deep Red, there are no plans to re-record the Demons score. That means the only way to get the full-band experience is by attending the tour, so don’t miss Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin turning cities into tombs across the country.
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