Tyler Bates

Tyler Bates first gained recognition through his expansive orchestral and orchestral-rock compositions for science-fiction and horror cinema, yet he has also supplied cues for numerous television programs and video-game releases while serving as songwriter, producer, and guitarist for rock outfits such as Marilyn Manson. Following an apprenticeship in low-budget features during the early and middle portion of the 1990s, he secured assignments on studio productions that included the 2000 Get Carter remake, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead, and Watchmen, his third collaboration with director Zack Snyder, which appeared in 2009. The ensuing decade placed him on the scoring teams for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, the initial three John Wick installments, Deadpool 2 in 2018, and Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw in 2019, half of those projects again directed by David Leitch. Concurrently he contributed to series such as Californication, Marvel’s The Punisher, and the horror drama The Purge, supplied music for the Watchmen, Transformers, and Killzone gaming franchises, and performed in more than one hundred concerts alongside Marilyn Manson before stepping away from the group in 2018. Into the 2020s he remained active in alternative rock, producing albums for Bush and for Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell, while delivering scores for Clive Barker’s Books of Blood in 2020, John Wick: Chapter Four in 2023, and Ti West’s slasher trilogy comprising X and Pearl, both released in 2022, followed by MaXXXine in 2024.

Born in Los Angeles on June 5, 1965, Bates spent his formative years in Chicago, where his mother exposed him to an eclectic array of musical styles. He began writing original material while still a teenager and relocated to Los Angeles in 1993 with the goal of establishing himself as a film composer. His earliest assignments involved a succession of B-movies that commenced with the 1993 independent science-fiction picture Blue Flame. During the same period he performed in the alternative-rock group Pet alongside vocalist Lisa Papineau; the band’s self-titled 1996 debut album, issued on Tori Amos’s Atlantic imprint Igloo, listed Amos as executive producer. Pet also appeared on the soundtrack collections for The Crow: City of Angels in 1996 and The Last Time I Committed Suicide in 1997. Bates departed the group in 1997 and turned his full attention to film scoring once that year’s The Last Time I Committed Suicide proved successful.

Steady assignments followed, among them Get Carter in 2000, City of Ghosts in 2002, and Dawn of the Dead in 2004, the last marking his initial partnership with Zack Snyder. He next collaborated with former rocker turned director Rob Zombie on The Devil’s Rejects in 2005, Halloween in 2007, and Halloween II in 2009. Within that same stretch he rejoined Snyder for the action spectacle 300 in 2006 and the dystopian DC Comics adaptation Watchmen in 2009, along with additional science-fiction and horror titles such as the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Video-game work began with Rise of the Argonauts in 2008 and continued with Watchmen: The End Is Nigh the following year.

Reuniting with Slither director James Gunn, Bates scored the 2010 feature Super, then provided music for Snyder’s Sucker Punch in 2011. Additional 2011 releases included the Conan the Barbarian remake and Killer Joe, a dark comedy scripted by Tracy Letts and directed by William Friedkin. Game soundtracks from the early part of the decade encompassed Army of Two: The 40th Day and Transformers: War for Cybertron. God of War: Ascension and Killzone: Shadow Fall arrived in 2013, the same year Bates again worked with Gunn on Movie 43. Their subsequent partnership on Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 yielded an orchestral score that appeared on multiple year-end critical lists. That year also concluded Bates’s seven-season tenure, shared with co-composer Tree Adams, on the series Californication, just as he joined the music departments for Salem and Kingdom. He partnered with Joel Richard on the 2014 crime thriller John Wick.

In 2015 Bates entered Marilyn Manson’s touring lineup as guitarist after having produced and co-written the 2014 album The Pale Emperor; the track “Cupid Carries a Gun” from that record served as the main-title theme for Salem. He returned to feature films in 2016 with The Belko Experiment, then scored the 2017 sequels Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and John Wick: Chapter 2, the latter again with Joel Richard. Additional 2017 projects included David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde, which incorporated covers and originals of 1980s hits plus a Bates-Manson interpretation of Ministry’s “Stigmata,” as well as the horror film Keep Watching and the science-fiction thriller 24 Hours to Live. After accumulating composing, producing, engineering, and mixing credits on the 2017 Marilyn Manson album Heaven Upside Down and completing more than one hundred concerts on its world tour, Bates declared his retirement from the band early in 2018. He finished the decade contributing to Marvel’s The Punisher, The Purge, Adult Swim’s Primal alongside composer Joanne Higginbottom, Deadpool 2 and Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, both with Leitch, and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.

Although he no longer toured, Bates reentered the alternative-rock sphere to co-write and produce Bush’s eighth studio album, The Kingdom, released in 2020. He likewise produced and performed on Brighten, Jerry Cantrell’s third solo album, which appeared in 2021. In Hollywood he supplied the score for the 2020 horror anthology Books of Blood before scoring Ti West’s 2022 features X and Pearl. His music for John Wick: Chapter Four, composed once more with Joel Richard, reached theaters in 2023, and he closed the trilogy with the 2024 release MaXXXine.