It’s been 16 years since the last John Carpenter-directed film, and 25 years since the wildly influential multihyphenate crafted a soundtrack to accompany one of his own visual projects. That changes this week with Cathedral, which arrived Tuesday (Aug. 4) as a graphic novel and Friday (Aug. 7) as a soundtrack album.
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Inspired by a weirdly detailed nightmare Carpenter had a few years ago, John Carpenter’s Cathedral follows three police investigators as they descend into a demonic underworld, seeking answers for the grisly murder of a cop in an abandoned church.
To accompany his debut graphic novel (the first new visual project from the legendary director since his 2010 film The Ward), Carpenter hit the studio with his longtime musical collaborators Cody Carpenter (his son) and Daniel Davies (his godson). Where the trio’s previous work (four installments of the acclaimed Lost Themes series as well as soundtracks for four films by other directors) was often eerie and minimalist, the Cathedral album goes hard, finding Carpenter, Carpenter and Davies churning out hammer-of-the-gods heavy metal riffs to accompany the hellishly vivid imagery of the book.
