The Midnight Meat Train

Want Some Meat? “Nacatl” Interview With Hayes, Marino, Lassen

The Midnight Meat Train, a film released a few weeks ago, has a lot of big names behind it. Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura took on the task of directing this adaptation of Clive Barker’s horrifying short story of the same name (written 25 years before the film debut). Along with having an original score, the film also sports some decent arranged remixes from visionary producer Justin Lassen. Some of these remixed songs come from bands like Apocalyptica, Second Coming, and Iconcrash. However, one song on the album was written by a pair of all-star game music veterans. They are Jason Hayes and Gerard Marino.

For those of you not in the know, Jason Hayes is the man behind a number of Blizzard’s soundtracks, including Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. As for Gerard Marino, you may know him from his work on the God of War series. The two worked together to compose a song entitled “Nacatl.” Justin Lassen also did arrangement on this track for its use in Midnight Meat Train.

After the jump, we have an interview with all three of these upstanding gentlemen: Jason Hayes, Gerard Marino, and Justin Lassen. We talk about the song “Nacatl,” the film for which it is used, and a host of other topics. Check it out!

OSV: Alright, let’s start with the obvious question, regarding the song’s strange title, Nacatl. Quick research (thank you, wikipedia) suggests it means “meat” in some ancient Aztec-related dialect. Is this correct? Why did you decide on this name, and what relevance does it have to the music?

Gerard Marino: The title of the movie figured into the title of the song, which does indeed translate as “meat.” As far as the use of the Aztec language of Nahuatl, I have to be semi-vague to avoid spoiling the story. The short story of MMT mentions an entity which predates human presence in the area which is now Manhattan, but the film script relocated the story to Los Angeles. I imagined how the first humans who came in contact with this entity might have reacted, and wrote the lyrics from their perspective in a dialect similar to their own. Some research told me that it would have been some Uto-Aztecan variant, and I settled on Nahuatl because it is a thoroughly researched and codified dialect, and thus dictionaries and other translation resources are readily available.

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