George S. Clinton's mindless score for the 1995 video game adaptation Mortal Kombat wreaks none of the musical carnage one would anticipate given the absurd, even cartoonish violence of the game -- in fact, it's embarrassingly tepid, embracing hard rock guitars, Japanese percussion, and badly dated electronic samples to create a mishmash of sound more annoying than anarchic. It often seems as if
Clinton dusts off synthesizers at least a dozen years old -- and if
Mortal Kombat sounded dated upon its original release, you can only imagine how old it sounds years later. Moreover, there's no trace of thematic development or melodic innovation here -- guitarist
Buckethead simply peels off skronky solo after skronky solo, as if style is any substitute for substance. Abysmal. ~ Jason Ankeny