Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Soundtrack/Score Album Vinyl Record Review

Sony's Waxwork Records label is set to release the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Original Motion Picture Music album on vinyl record on November 22nd. Read on to find out more about it...

Readers of Spook Central may be asking, "Didn't you already review this album back when the movie came out?" Yes, and nice of you to remember. The album was released digitally and on compact disc in March 2024. I reviewed the CD release in late April. For whatever reason, the vinyl record release is arriving now, eight months later. Sony just sent me an advanced copy, so a new-ish review is in order. A lot of this will be a re-write of my CD review, since the music seems to be 100% the same among all formats. The big difference lies in the packaging... but I'm getting ahead of myself. (PS: Click on all images from here on for enlargements)

Since the original release back in March, the album has undergone a small, but significant, title change. No longer is it called the "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack". It is now the "Original Motion Picture Music", which better reflects the fact that it contains the "score" music cues composed by Dario Marianelli and Elmer Bernstein, and not the few pieces of licensed music (aka "needle drops") used in the film.

Let's start by taking a look at the track list, which is split across four sides of two records:

SIDE A
  1.  1:55  Manhattan Adventurers Society
  2.  4:08  The Sewer Dragon
  3.  0:58  Firehouse
  4.  1:52  Ray's Occult
  5.  1:22  A Ghost in the Attic
  6.  2:27  Chess in the Park
  7.  1:18  When the Light is Green...

SIDE B
  8.  3:08  Paranormal Research Center
  9.  0:40  A Call
10.  1:52  The Orb
11.  3:06  A Tour of the Firehouse
12.  1:13  Slimer
13.  1:32  Dadi's Secret Room
14.  1:45  Should We Investigate?
15.  3:52  Dr. Wartzki

SIDE C
16.  3:04  Patience
17.  1:10  Golden Years
18.  1:45  It's Your Turn
19.  3:57  Ionic Separator
20.  1:11  Now He Can Control You
21.  1:44  The Horns
22.  1:05  Back to Headquarters

SIDE D
23.  2:20  New Proton Packs
24.  2:02  Possessor's Mistake
25.  2:17  Was Any of it Real?
26.  4:11  Last Frozen Stand
27.  1:51  The Thawing
28.  3:21  In The Fabric of the Universe

The total time is 1:01:06 and, as you can see, the tracks are listed in movie order. YAY! The track names might be considered a spoiler to some, but at this point, I doubt there's anyone who hasn't seen the film already. It's been on disc, digital, and even Netflix for months!

If you love Elmer Bernstein's Ghostbusters score, you'll like this. That's because 60% of the music is what Mr. Bernstein wrote, either note-for-note or interpolated. This is a big improvement over Rob Simonsen's Afterlife score, which was more like 90% Bernstein. Dario Marianelli's original pieces are a joy to listen to, and fit beautifully with Ghostbusters, so it's a shame that there isn't more of it and less of Bernstein's work. Randy Edelman and Theodore Shapiro created completely original scores for their respective films, so why can't Simonsen and Marianelli?

Since I do not have a record player, I can not comment on the quality of the music. I assume that the same masters used for the digital and CD releases were used here, so it should sound just as rich and clear as the CD does.

Moving on, let's take a detailed look at the packaging.

The "heavyweight gatefold jacket with matte satin coating" features new artwork by J.J. Harrison all over the place, starting with the cover. The new cover image shows Garraka looming over the firehouse, while giving it a gentle squeeze as the possessed Ecto-1 is stopped in front by a barrage of icicles.


Placed on the shrink wrap over the front cover is this sticker:


The gatefold opens up to reveal a gorgeous Frozen Empire homage to the classic The Real Ghostbusters early promotional artwork by Gabi Payn. The image below of the original artwork is courtesy of J.J. Harrison's Instagram, where he made note of a small change that had to be made at Sony's request: "In my sketch, Rudd started out silly and lifting up his sunglasses like Winston in the original art, but Sony nixed that as it wasn't accurate to the film. [...] If you watch the movie, though, Venkman does that exact thing with his sunglasses when they meet the big bad Garraka. Coincidence? I coulda asked Gil Kenan, but maybe it's more fun not to know."


The back cover contains the track list flanking artwork of Bonesy being sucked into a trap. Harrison would post the original artwork to Instagram with this detailed note, which reveals that the character was originally named Phosphor: "Before I got to see the final film, Sony gave me access to a treasure trove of behind the scenes material to help with the creation of the soundtrack artwork. While ogling all the renders of gruesome new creatures, and thinking about my marching orders, I zeroed in on this ghost labeled 'Phosphor'. To me, it was the scariest looking of the bunch. There was also a kind of melancholy to him and that made him most interesting to me. Clearly he wasn't the star of the picture, so no use casting him on the cover, but I wanted to feature him in a big way. So Phosphor gets the back cover all to himself. Most diehard horror fans should recognize the tribute to The Video Dead here. One of the all-time greatest VHS covers and permanently seared into my brain. Phosphor getting ghost trapped made the perfect visual parallel."


Inside the jacket you not only will find the two discs, but also a large four-page booklet featuring liner notes and credits. The front cover is a drawing of Garraka putting on his horns.


The inside gatefold features artwork of Slimer playing a keyboard and Pukey doing his thing, surrounding a "Keyboards and Proton Streams" essay by director Gil Kenan, which the front cover sticker (and press release) proclaim as "exclusive", except...


...it's the same essay, which is dated "March 2024", that was originally printed in the booklet with the compact disc release.

The Yamaha DX-7 was plugged straight into the board in the historic John Williams studio building on the Columbia Pictures lot one damp Saturday in January. As the first notes were struck, the instrument became a time machine that transported all of us lucky enough to be in the room straight back to 1984. It didn't hurt that the player was Peter Bernstein, the first film's orchestrator, and son of the late great Elmer Bernstein. Elmer's score for GHOSTBUSTERS ('84) swung for the fences. It's a brilliant and unorthodox score that elevated that film's tone and mythology where other comic film scores would have undercut or satirized.

When Dario Marianelli and I started our conversations at the beginning of our latest collaboration on GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE, the notion of musical tone inevitably came up. Ghostbusters is a comedy franchise, but it takes its dramatic stakes seriously. Dario set out to support a new thematic invention, that would introduce audiences to our villain, an evil god named Garraka. That theme, evoking ancient supernatural battles, can be heard in the climax of "The Horns" - the piece is primo Dario, with a cinematic tone that reaches to opera and golden age Hollywood in its expansiveness. It's one of my favorite pieces on this soundtrack, and in grand Ghostbusters tradition, it elevates the scene of Garraka coming to his full strength and imbues it with scope and power and urgency. Just the thing for a bunch of outsiders with proton packs to fling laser beams at...

But the piece that started our journey on this film is very different from the brassy fanfare that accompanies Garraka. It's a small, lyrical and haunting piece of music that Dario wrote for the character of Melody before I started filming. The emotionality in the music gave me a throughline to hang the film on, aside from being an achingly beautiful piece of film music. It was written by Dario as a suite for the Ondes Martenot, a vintage electronic instrument which is heavily associated with Bernstein's 1984 soundtrack but given space to perform as a central melodic voice in the piece. Then as now, the instrument is performed by the incredible Cynthia Millar.

I'm uniquely proud of the music that Dario has created for our new Ghostbusters film and for the way that it communes with the notes and sounds left for us by Mr. Bernstein, either inscribed on paper or transmitted by his son through an old keyboard plugged straight into the board.

The back cover of the booklet features all of the musician and other credits, with an illustration of Slimer preparing to conduct a silly symphony.


In a rather clever bit of design, J.J. Harrison placed the mischievous Mini Pufts on all four disc labels in such a way that they would appear to dissolve into a gooey mess as the record spins.


The Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Original Motion Picture Music album is available on vinyl in two different colors, both set to release on November 22nd. The "Limited Edition Waxwork Exclusive 'Slimer' Neon Green Colored Vinyl" can be purchased for $50 on Waxwork's website. The "Frozen Empire Splatter Colored Vinyl" can also be purchased from Waxwork (for the same price), as well as at Amazon and anywhere else where records are sold. Sony sent me the "Slimer Green" disc, and I think that is the better looking of the two. The "splatter" disc looks like someone vomited on it after eating too many Bomb Pops.


If vinyl isn't your thing, the album is still available on Audio CD and Digital MP3. Do be aware that the CD uses movie photos and doesn't feature the beautiful J.J. Harrison artwork.

Images scanned and/or photographed by me, or provided by Sony. This item has been provided by Sony for review on this site.