John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

John Carpenter's Cathedral is a soundtrack for a story you can hold in your hands, made with his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies to accompany his first graphic novel.

The trio have worked side by side since the Lost Themes series began in 2015, and on the Halloween film scores that followed, so their chemistry is long settled. This time the spark was a dream Carpenter had in 2024, which he and Sandy King turned into a graphic novel about an abandoned church in downtown Los Angeles, a violent killing and the corruption buried in the catacombs below. Each track lines up with a chapter of the book.

The surprise is how heavy it gets. "Primeval" opens on eighties synth textures before Davies' guitar and the drums kick in hard, and "Identity" builds from thunder and rain into piano, organ and violin before the riffs arrive. "Abandoned Cathedral" slows the pulse with gloomy piano and organ, while "Lord of the Underground" is about as close to straight metal as Carpenter has ever come.

The horror-synth DNA is still everywhere, from the pulsing keyboards to the creeping sense of dread, yet this is the hardest-hitting record of his late-career run.

Played loud with the lights low, it does exactly what Carpenter's music has always done best.