Early life and film scoring

Bates was born on June 5, 1965,^[1] in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in Chicago, he returned to Los Angeles in 1993 to pursue a career in music.^[1] He began his career in the 1990s scoring low-budget films like Tammy and the T-Rex, The Last Time I Committed Suicide, and Denial. In the meantime, he was a member of the alternative rock Pet alongside Lisa Papineau; the band released their eponymous debut in 1996.^[1] His breakthrough into the mainstream came in the early 2000s, when he worked on higher-profile projects like Get Carter, Half Past Dead, and Baadasssss! The 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead was significant, as he would maintain long-term collaborations with its director Zack Snyder, and writer James Gunn.

Bates scored four of director Rob Zombie's films, beginning with 2005's The Devil's Rejects. For Zombie's remake of Halloween and its sequel Halloween, Bates adapted John Carpenter's original themes and motifs in order to fit the darker, grittier, and more contemporary atmosphere of the films. It was around 2007 that Bates began working regularly on big-budget, blockbuster films; including 300, Doomsday, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Sucker Punch, and Conan the Barbarian. He also composed scores for smaller, independent films like The Way, Killer Joe, The Sacrament, and Flight 7500.

The soundtrack for 300 was controversial due to its heavy borrowing of themes from film scores by Elliot Goldenthal, amongst others.^[5][6][7] On August 3, 2007, Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledged this in a statement.^[8] The matter was settled amicably with the soundtrack credits being subsequently described as adapted from material by Elliot Goldenthal.^{[citation needed]}

Bates composed the score for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Having worked with James Gunn in the past, Bates had a good idea on how Gunn wanted things done.^[9] Before any of the cinematography started, Gunn had Bates write several themes prior to shooting so the scene could be matched to the music instead of the score being created to fit the scene. This required cooperation between Bates and Gunn in advance since these scores would be in the final piece, instead of a temporary filler acting as a placeholder. They influenced the performance on set. This required an undertaking by both Bates and his team. For 4 months, they clocked upwards of 100-hour work weeks to produce this finished product.^[10] After all the work, they had a total of 29 different soundtracks giving a combined total of 64:34 of music.^[11] "At least half the cues in the movie have more than 500 tracks of audio," Bates was quoted in an interview with Melinda Newman on HitFix. This was a result of there being orchestral passages that were doubled or tripled, choirs, overdubs, and other instrumentals.^{[citation needed]}

That same year, Bates composed the score to the action film John Wick, collaborating with Joel J. Richard and Marilyn Manson. The film proved a surprise critical and financial success, and Bates returned to score its sequel John Wick: Chapter 2, and also its third and fourth installments. He re-teamed with that film's co-director David Leitch to score a spiritual successor, the Cold War-era spy thriller Atomic Blonde.^{[citation needed]}

Video game scoring

Bates composed the soundtrack for the PlayStation 3 games God of War: Ascension and Army of Two: The 40th Day, as well as the PlayStation 4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall. Most recently he composed for Crossfire.^{[citation needed]}

Other projects

In 2014, Bates co-wrote and produced Marilyn Manson's record The Pale Emperor. The album debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200, while the single "Deep Six" went on to chart higher than any other single by Marilyn Manson on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Chart. Bates joined the band in 2015 as the lead guitarist for The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour. The album's song "Cupid Carries a Gun" was used as the opening title music of the TV show Salem, and Bates composed the show's score.^[12] In April 2015 he left Marilyn Manson to resume film work.^{[citation needed]}

In October 2015, during a Q&A with Marilyn Manson at the Grammy Museum, Manson announced that he and Tyler were working on new music together again. In 2015 Loudwire listed "The Mephistopheles Of Los Angeles" No. 1 best rock track and Rolling Stone included The Pale Emperor in its Top 50 list of the best albums of 2015. He returned as the lead guitarist during the tour with Slipknot in July 2016.^[13] In 2017, they worked for the follow-up Heaven Upside Down with a world tour, starting July 20, in Budapest,^[14] playing more than 100 shows around the world. In January 2018, Bates announced via Twitter that he left the band and returned to his studio to work exclusively on film and television.^[15]

Tyler composed the song, "Monsters After Dark" for the night Halloween mode of the ride Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!.^{[citation needed]}

In 2021, Bates co-produced and played strings, percussion and guitar on Jerry Cantrell's album Brighten.^[16]

Film scores

Television scores

Video game soundtracks

Own work

• Roseland with Azam Ali

with Marilyn Manson

• The Pale Emperor (2015)
• Heaven Upside Down (2017)

with Pet

• Pet (1996) (guitar, bass, backing vocals, production)

with Bush

• The Kingdom (2020) (songwriting, production)

with Jerry Cantrell

• Brighten (2021) (strings, percussion, guitar, production)