The original Resident Evil film soundtrack deserves a place in the nu-metal canon

Along with nu-metal’s rise in popularity came its usage in numerous movie soundtracks in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Among them– The Matrix trilogy, Freddy vs Jason, Queen of the Damned, and xXx. The soundtrack for the first movie adaptation of the Resident Evil video game series is an underrated example.

Starring Milla Jovovich as Alice and Michelle Rodriguez as Rain, the 2002 film resembles the gameplay of the survival horror game series. As Alice and her team navigate the Umbrella Corporation’s underground facility, they must get past several deadly obstacles. Their task progressively gets more difficult, as they face a powerful supercomputer as well as numerous zombified scientists and Dobermans that have been mutated by the T-Virus after a lab accident. Throughout this version of Resident Evil, several industrial and nu-metal songs can be heard.

Songs featured within the Resident Evil film itself:

Front Line Assembly – “Existence” (Epitaph, 2001)

Nine Inch Nails – “Fist Fuck” (Fixed, 1992)

Spineshank – “Cyanide 2600” (The Height of Callousness, 2000)

Coal Chamber – “Something Told Me” (Dark Days, 2002)

Slipknot – “My Plague (New Abuse Mix)” (differs from version on Iowa, 2001)

Fear Factory – “Invisible Wounds (The Suture Mix)” (Hatefiles, 2003, differs from version on Digimortal, 2001)

Front Line Assembly – “Torched” (Implode, 1999)

Apollo 440 – “Wall of Death” (2000)

While the Slipknot, Coal Chamber, and Fear Factory songs also appeared on the soundtrack album, the CD also contained numerous tracks and remixes not featured in the movie. Some artists are well-known today, while other bands are representative of the early 2000s era. Among others, tracks included “Everyone” by Adema, “Anything But This” by Static-X, and a remix of Ill Nino’s “What Comes Around”. Also noteworthy, a remix by The Prodigy of Method Man’s “Release Yo Delf” appeared, along with The Crystal Method track “Name of the Game” (a song Mike Shinoda references in Fort Minor’s signature song “Remember the Name”). Whether the songs fit into the nu-metal sound or were adjacent to it, all of them make sense within the intense atmosphere of the film.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the film or the games that inspired it, many songs on the Resident Evil soundtrack still hold up. For anyone who got into heavy music around this time, it encapsulates a point in time in nu-metal history. It’s just one of the notable soundtracks featuring nu-metal, post-grunge, and metalcore songs at the time – and it’s one of the more interesting ones, too.