Dante Tomaselli’s HOLY TERROR (2025)

It’s been several years since writer-director-producer-composer Dante Tomaselli released his last album, 2019’s Out-of-Body Experience, and if fans enjoyed his partial shift into more rhythmic structured pieces, his latest work, Holy Terror, offers shorter, more precise compositions rooted in the sights, sounds, and digital influences of his youth.

 

 

Inspired by the synth-heavy music of the 80s and 90s and the player-oriented adventures of video games, the 12 tracks that comprise this thoroughly enjoyable work progress from addictive pulses and beats towards a lengthy final work that’s a kind of interstellar dream. Holy Terror is very much a cohesive progression as You, the Player, drop a quarter into a game console, find yourself seated in a hot rod on a fast-moving racetrack to Hell, and must choose fast-approaching options that might lead to moments of respite, or plunge you into another zone where the voice of a manipulator-trickster taunts rather than aids in reducing whatever nightmare you’re speeding towards.

Crafted with the same sonic precision as Out-of-Body Experience, Holy Terror is an even more pristine aural experience in which the fine layers of material are crisp and clean, and evoke a vivid surround-sound experience, with very low frequencies giving one’s subwoofer and headphone drivers a modest workout (and tickle the listener’s Sensurround funny bone).

In our lengthy Q&A, Tomaselli discusses the genesis and craftsmanship of Holy Terror, inspirations steeped in nostalgia and sadness, and his latest film project, Damnation, being co-written with filmmaker and Fangoria and Rue Morgue writer Michael Gingold.

And at the very end are some links to both related audio and video pieces referenced in our Q&A, as well as stills tied to teaser video I’ll post this week, fusing one of Tomaselli’s tracks with images using an iconic Atari C-240 audio visualizer.

 

Mark R. Hasan: Holy Terror is quite different from your prior albums in that the tracks are very tight pieces that average a few minutes, although the final track, “Deep Space”, is closer to your long-form narratives. I’m curious which compositions first formulated in your mind, and was there a design to evoke the tight structure of music and sounds from the video games of your youth?

 

Dante Tomaselli: I was 10 years-old in 1980 and videogames were new and serotonin would release from my brain whenever I’d hear electronic sounds. Even before the 80s, I just… I remember being enthralled with Close Encounters (1977)… Star Wars (1977), which my parents took me to experience in movie theatres multiple times.

 

 

My father brought home a gift, a top notch stereo system, and I’d spend endless hours absorbing LP records, 45s and 8-tracks… My favorite albums were soundtracks and Halloween-themed records like Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House (1964). Interspersed with everything, there was a sort of disco version of Star Wars by a band called Meco and a section featured lasers…Woah.Those cold and pristine sounds just stunned me and I played the laser battles over and over. It was around this time that I purchased my first album, The Cars (1978), and became addicted to their inner space voyage, “Moving in Stereo”, with its throbbing rhythms and basslines and dreamlike 3-D synths. When I’d listen, the sounds produced visuals and suddenly my bedroom walls transformed into the Hayden Planetarium.

 

MRH: It’s interesting that you mention Halloween-themed albums – I only knew of them when I started collecting soundtracks in the late 1980s. Many were popular effects-laden recordings that I think go as far back as the 1950s, if not the 1960s, as they were good records to show off stereo systems. Because they were comprised of themed sound effects suites and music, and (largely) professionally produced, I wonder if the precision of classic effects like creaking doors, screams, wind, etc. cemented an impression of where to apply core effects, and where further processed effects could be layered.

 

 

DT: Definitely. I was absorbing those recordings at an insanely young age and just inhaled them. Every day was like Halloween and my room was decorated like a funhouse. My mother and I always had a strong creative bond and she nurtured this love affair with the supernatural and encouraged me to play an electronic organ while placing a chalkboard in front of me.

 

 

 

Mom just knew to purchase albums like Pickwick International’s Sounds To Make You Shiver (1974) when I was 4 years-old. Around this time, my parents took me to see Earthquake (1974) in theatres…in Sensurround. I loved the tactile, crumbling poster art for the film and would just stare and enter into its animated world. The movie was a blur; I just focused on the deep, rumbling sound effects.

 

 

 

 

 

Then a year or two later, I had the actual Remco game [Earthquake Tower, from 1976] where there was a towering building to assemble and destroy. The toy came with a strange recording. It wasn’t music but pure sonic mayhem, variations of earthquakes, explosions and terrified screaming. This recording pushed a deep button in my imagination.

 

 

MRH: I think you mentioned in an earlier interview that you crafted visuals for dance clubs, and have an affinity for kinetic rhythms. “Route 666” starts the album with a bang – thick backbeats, and a melodic, elliptical bridge that very clearly evokes synths of the 1990s. When you’re shaping a piece, do you hone in on a rhythm and bassline, or are there disparate elements that you shape over time, and ideas eventually coalesce into a working draft?

 

DT: I honed in on a rhythm and bassline first and that’s something I never did on my past projects. I’m used to constructing an approximately 60-minute mass of heavily layered sound design and music and dividing the concoction into songs. Like pizza slices. But on Holy Terror each track was crafted individually. For “Route 666”, I had an idea of what I was going for in my mind, a kind of galloping piece with a thick, dark backbeat. It sort of becomes the spine of the song. Next I was on a mission to sculpt the lead synth and find the right palette of sound effects and tones that interlock.

 

 

MRH: This is more of an observation: “Sin” is perhaps a good example of a work that evokes videogames, but it’s also an organic, flowing amalgam of a watery bassline, a commanding voice, and sounds with a metallic sheen – the latter perhaps an allusion to circuits or an electrified pinball game.

 

DT: “Sin” was constructed around the main concept of the Holy Terror painting, the cover art painting, a kind of an infinite pathway of choices. Simon Pritchard did a tremendous job painting the image, that is really the centerpiece visual of the album.

It is both a stairway to heaven and a gate to hell. I’ve imagined it like a pinball game… or old Atari or Intellivision game. If the player doesn’t make it to heaven, the player is sent to Hell. Access… denied. A disembodied voice is asking, “Did you make the right choice?”

It’s about peeling back layers of guilt buried in the unconscious mind. Plus there’s all of my late 70s and early 80s influences like Gary Numan, Coil, Ric Ocasek, Devo, Greg Hawkes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Severed Heads… And of course John Carpenter. My track, “Elizabeth Dane” is an homage to him.

 

 

MRH: I wonder if we can get into some of the detailing that characterizes your use of sound, especially frequencies. “Elizabeth Dane” is a good example where I get a sense your aural palette is organized into frequency plains, and there are deliberate spacings in-between to ensure degrees of lows, mids, and highs as well as echoing sounds can drift or pop in and surprise. It’s like we’re forced to fixate on specific rhythms, for example, and there’s an element of surprise or shock when a crystalline series of high notes appear.

 

DT: “Elizabeth Dane” is what inspired me to create the rest of the tracks on the album. I had no intention of composing any more music after my last album, Out-of-Body Experience, which drained me. I thought I had nothing more to give. But this one night, I began thinking of John Carpenter and the excitement I felt at his concert in NYC and suddenly I was compelled to compose just one song that would be dedicated to him. I knew the title, immediately… “Elizabeth Dane”.

Being 9 and 10 and experiencing his Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980) in theatres was almost a religious experience. I used to play the theme to Halloween on every piano I could find. Also, when I’d go home to my darkened basement, I’d try to recreate The Fog on my little Casio keyboard hooked up to an amp and electronic drum set. For “Elizabeth Dane”, I was channelling those memories and of course my love of his deep, deep trademark baritones and bright trebles. Minimalist yet… full-bodied. Cold… icy yet emotionally-charged. I wanted the dips to be ultra-low at the beginning so those crystal-like spikes could really pop.

 

MRH: In mentioning Carpenter, I can hear subtle homages to his style, but what I love about “Elizabeth Dane” is it’s not an overt homage – it’s very much your own composition that fits within the Holy Terror narrative. Your approach is selective, subtle, discerning; and perhaps a lengthy process of trial, error, experimenting, and refining. Just curious how often you step away from a piece, or if you work on it for long stretches until it feels almost just right prior to mastering.

 

DT: It’s the deprivation of making movies that squeezes out these sound sculptures. I want more than anything to be on the set directing my new occult nightmare. But that is not happening and so the music materializes. I allow the tracks to take up all my time and dominate my world. Just like my films.

All of my albums employ unused sounds that didn’t make it to my movie soundtracks, so I have this huge bin – an island of misfit sounds – and I’ll dip into it. I approached Holy Terror, like Out-of-Body Experience (2019), Witches (2017), Nightmare (2015), The Doll (2014) and Scream in the Dark (2014)… with the seriousness of mounting a feature film. I’ll spend long hours sound sculpting and time just melts away. It’s always hard for me to say a track is done and ready for mastering. I’ll find more faults, more sections that need to be finessed. For sure, I know I’ll change anything right up until the end.

 

MRH: I’ve always felt a well-engineered piece requires minimal bass, mids, and treble adjustments by the listener to suit their subjective tastes. There’s a 1963 album by jazz pianist Pete Jolly (Little Bird) that requires almost zero tweaking, as well as many scores & albums recorded by Italian composers such as Ennio Morricone (Cat o’ Nine Tails) and Claudio Simonetti (End of the Millenium), where the close-miking, mixing, and precise engineering are near-perfect. Holy Terror is that perfect, and I wonder what protocols you and your engineer Don Olson establish and follow to meet that high standard; where the listener just has to press PLAY, and adjust the volume – and nothing else.

 

DT: Thank you so much, Mark. I really do appreciate hearing that feedback and have cherished all of your analytical reviews and articles for both Rue Morgue and your own publications. I have to tell you that it really burns me when I hear fellow musicians tell me that they’re considering having their works mastered by AI. God, no. The human touch is needed…more than ever.

My sound engineer, Don and I spend endless hours trying to get it right in the mastering process. Some might even say we over-do it. No way. He used to be my piano teacher and quickly became my sound engineer. We go through every single element together and through this process, the song improves, polishes itself. No computer can do that, just chemistry between two human beings.

 

MRH: AI can be a tool in cleaning up, repairing, restoring damaged recordings, or recreating maybe something specific, but in seeing the density of your myriad audio tracks for individual compositions – every edit, layering, specifically applied effect – those are the result of human instincts. Creative decisions are sometimes made because they just ‘feel right’, and sometimes human flaws – whether in a vocal or instrumental performance, or serendipitous accidents – are unique to us, and enrich a work. Mastering an album using AI would probably lead to a rather neutral, safe, and maybe indifference creation. The artist decides what to emphasize based on personal preferences, and where you want specifically shaped motifs to recur in different dramatic guises.

 

DT: Yes, I won’t be giving any entity that much control. AI is interesting and helpful in all those ways you’ve mentioned. For me, I like how paintings for my films or songs can come alive… As for writing compositions or composing music, I’m less enthused as AI seems to be stealing from other artists, musicians and writers. A kind of frankenstein of stolen parts. I enjoy nothing more than to be sculpting electronic music that I’m passionate about drawing out of myself. 

 

MRH: Are there sweet spots in the editing and shaping phase where you know you’ve hit the right sonics?

 

DT: Well, when I get lost in a composition and have no idea where it is going, sort of like what I try to do with my movies. I want to be surprised about what is around the next corner. Almost like we’re moving through a psychedelic funhouse.

Growing up, I remember I used to go deep into the woods and purposely get myself lost. Also, my older siblings were all Beatles fans and one of the first songs that made an impression was “Revolution 9” on the White Album (1968). It was an eerie, unpredictable collage of tones, voices and sound effects…And wow those sounds produced visuals that would glow right in front of me. When I heard that powerful song, I was just a tiny boy. “Revolution 9” jumped out of the speakers and felt so mysterious and exciting, a bit taboo. I knew even at that age I craved to create something just like it.

 

MRH: I think there’s a genuine distinction between sounds which can be sterile after they’ve been manipulated, processed, reprocessed, and mixed vs. sounds that remain organic throughout the shaping and refining stages. The final and lengthy “Deep Space” is a good example of crisp, finely detailed sounds that shape-shift naturally but never feel overly processed – what starts out as a series of low pulses can blossom into a trickling flow of higher frequency sounds, yet plunge into cavernous depths. The effects applied to the sounds are never overdone, which ensures your pieces don’t overwhelm the listener; you might feel cajoled, or pulled, but never shoved and immolated into a sonic cloud. I’m curious about your process of refining tracks, and at what stages does Don Olson enter, and his contributions in guiding and shaping your ideas into a long-form, cohesive work.

 

 

DT: I compose, produce and edit all my tracks from beginning to end, alone in my studio room. I edit the tracks on my Apple Logic Pro X software, many times in the middle of the night but once the songs are done, I need and appreciate a quality musician in the room. That’s when my sound engineer, Don enters for the mastering process and we really take it seriously. Don is fanatical and will go over one sound over and over and it would send anyone else to an insane asylum. We’re a good match because he knows I’m just as crazed.

My favorite part… I’ve loved the post sound production phase on all my four feature films, Desecration (1999), Horror (2003), Satan’s Playground (2006) and especially Torture Chamber (2013). Unlike some directors, I’m there in the sound studio every second. I’ve always said it’s my favorite part of the filmmaking process and 50% of the film’s equation, composing music and sound design and aligning the soundtrack. Very few sounds on Holy Terror, unlike my other albums, were manipulated and processed at all.

 

 

Some basslines went through some compressors to wrangle the low end when they’re too boomy but other than that most all individual sounds were left alone and not processed. Did I cut up and shape sounds? Oh yes. I’m a sound sculptor. They’re precisely mutilated chips of whispers, thunderstorms… a violent earthquake… It’s a collage, a collection of sounds, a sonic wedding cake.

 

 

The track “Deep Space” was born last and it was composed while recovering from spinal surgery and grieving the loss of my cousin, Alfred Sole [director of the 1976 cult thriller Alice, Sweet Alice), who committed suicide. Plus the disintegration of my 13 year-old dog, Trippy, my beautiful English Springer Spaniel who was the light of my life and slowly dying. I would have these vivid, searing nightmares, full of ear-splitting walls of sound and would go into my studio, in a trance, practically sleep walking and just sculpt these celestial nightmares.

 

MRH: The loss of a loved one is devastating, and art is often a pathway to examining hurt, confronting fears and conflicts, and can form the first steps towards healing or regaining some normalcy. Has Holy Terror as a whole enabled you to take such steps?

 

DT: It was my goal in creating this album dedicated to the memory of my cousin to find some closure or maybe leave him with some  ear candy but it seems nothing really helps. I miss Alfred Sole terribly. It’s not going away. It’s a sharp, heightened sensation, a kind of emotional violence and the only way to outweigh it is to focus on our happy memories.

 

 

MRH: Simon Pritchard’s paintings for your album are incredible – “Deep Space” is amazing in its details and vivid colours, and feels like an abstract impression of a Lovecraftian monster slithering from a futuristic world into our own, with pure hunger, and zero mercy for what it devours. How has your creative relationship with Pritchard grown over the years, and are there aspects of his finished paintings from which you draw?

 

DT: There’s always a long period of planning before I contact Simon with specific instructions. A lot of fantasizing about what image, what colors I want to represent a song… or movie poster. I usually skip around and sample different painters for different projects but for the past six years I’ve been totally faithful to Simon Pritchard, who’s been painting the art for all my music projects as well as pre-production poster art for my upcoming fifth feature film.

We have a similar Italian-horror 60s,70s, early 80s aesthetic. When I sent him the instructions for “Route 666” cover art, I was imagining driving on an old highway with rolling hills and cemeteries stretching back to an infinite horizon. I was secretly visualizing a kind of macabre Close Encounters poster and soon found out he was imagining the same movie poster. For “Deep Space”, we were going for something more abstract and aimed to feature an all-encompassing, monstrous, jellyfish-like entity in space. A starship. I remember sending Simon reference photos of Portuguese man o’ wars because I wanted the creature’s tentacles to have that evil, stinging feel. I consider the paintings that accompany my music to be vital and part of the overall experience.

 

MRH: Going back a bit, you mentioned the Hayden Planetarium, which is an extraordinary building – I have a sense a planetarium was an impressionable environment for you, given it’s a wide angle, domed portal into an ever-changing series of vantages where colours, lights, motion, and sounds.

 

DT: I have the most striking memories of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC and could probably live there. Talk about an out-of-body experience—it was a fantasy land come to life. The only downside was that my neck would start to hurt. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, when I was living on campus at Pratt Institute and later at the School of Visual Arts, I remember seeing laser light shows for bands like Pink Floyd. These events were fun, but I was mainly electrified by my experiences viewing outer space.

Just recently, I had the idea to create a standalone album of the sounds of different planets. Of course, I know there is no sound in space, but there is electromagnetic radiation — and through that, we can “hear” very specific sounds emanating from different planets. The sound of Saturn, which is the planet of structure and discipline, is so eerie and sci-fi, it’s hard to believe no one composed it.

 

MRH: And lastly. Can you provide a few hints of your upcoming film? And what are some of the key joys of being on set, as the enterprise of a motion picture is in play?

 

 

DT: My next film is titled Damnation and it’s a supernatural shocker concerning witchcraft and a violent haunting at a family-owned wax museum in Salem. The story revolves around a 17 year-old girl who is at war with her mother and her deeply held religious beliefs. Michael Gingold and I really believe in the project. It has had many rewrites and was originally titled, The Doll. I love being on set, directing my new occult nightmare. I feel aligned with the being I really am – a creator.

My plan is that the viewer experiences a flow of unsettling designs and patterns which begins to work on a subliminal level. Even last night, Michael and I revamped a scene and had a breakthrough moment. We are tailoring the screenplay to my sensibilities as a director. I feel… It is now the psychological funhouse dark ride… or mind-bending experience, I’ve been craving to film.

If done correctly, I think it will be my best film, the most effective dark night of the soul funhouse I’ve concocted. I’m going back to all the things that scared me growing up, holes, attics, wax figures, dolls, and an evil, enigmatic parent. Truth be told, I’m channelling the little boy in me. The mother in the story will curl your toes as she’s inspired by the religious fanaticism of my cousin, Alfred Sole’s killer—Mrs. Tredoni in Alice, Sweet Alice. Same Italian accent too.

I’m fantasizing the visuals, how I will shoot scenes, blocking… I’m scoring it too. I’ve done that on every single one of my movies, created sections of the soundtrack before it’s ever shot. It allows me to set the tone. Damnation is designed to be a scare-fest but churning underneath are themes of religious hypocrisy, psychological projection… progressive vs. conservative. My fifth feature film intends to be a provocative horror film devoted to scaring an audience seeking serious chills.

 

* * *

 

Many thanks to Dante Tomaselli for this interview. Holy Terror is available from Amazon on Demand, iTunes, and Spotify.

Our prior discussions from 2019, 2015, and 2007 are archived at KQEK.com, as are reviews of his films, and selected albums (the latter originally covered in Rue Morgue Magazine).

For more details of upcoming reviews & interviews, please follow KQEK.com on Facebook and Instagram, and for details regarding my visualization of a selected track from Holy Terror, please similarly follow Big Head Amusements on Facebook and Instagram, where I’ll also post a brief making-of that details the use of a vintage Atari C-240 Video Music gizmo.

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, if you’re curious about some of the sound effects albums and the frankly amazing Remco game, each of these three are archived on YouTube:

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Tags: Composer Interview, Dante Tomaselli, featured, filmmusic, full-image, Holy Terror (2025), soundtrack

Category: EDITOR'S BLOG, FILM MUSIC, INTERVIEWS