This stunning soundtrack from 1977 is the favorite of many a
Goblin fan because it represents their sound carried to its most powerful and intense extremes.
Suspiria was another score for their cinematic alter ego, director Dario Argento, and backed up the story of a girl who enrolls in a German dance academy only to discover it is a cover for a powerful coven of witches. The music is just as scary as the film itself, blending wailing electric guitar, whooping synthesizers, and screaming wordless cries into a spooky, bombastic sound that manages to be terrifying even without the benefit of the film's gruesome images.
Suspiria has long been popular with heavy metal fans because it sports a hard-rocking edge equal in intensity to the scariest works of
Black Sabbath or
King Diamond: the title theme slowly builds a spooky riff on bells, acoustic guitar, and synthesizer until it erupts into a hard-rocking mid-section where nimble synthesizer solos spar with ghostly cries of "Witch! Witch!," and "Sighs" mixes panting, wordless vocals with an array of furious power chords to create an unbearably high level of suspense. Even when the score downplays the gothic rock theatrics on subtler tracks like "Black Forest" and "Blind Concert," the group's members still manage to create an intensely creepy atmosphere. The end result is an album that is guaranteed to please
Goblin fans and is highly likely to appeal to fans of gothic and heavy metal sounds. [Collector's note: the 1997 CD reissue of
Suspiria sports four bonus tracks, consisting of three alternate version of "Suspiria" and a slightly different version of "Markos."] ~ Donald A. Guarisco