(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Hello HDK friends!
Among the albums in heavy rotation at HDK headquarters, at the top, there is definitely the soundtrack of Conan the Barbarian by maestro Basil Poledouris. The maestro has composed other excellent soundtracks (such as Robocop, The Hunt for Red October and Conan the Destroyer), but the soundtrack of the first Conan-movie is a cut above the rest. In short, a classic. We get goose bumps every time we listen the words: "...Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!" at the beginning of Anvil of Crom!
Basil Poledouris "Conan the Barbarian" O.S.T. (1982)
In Italy, we all had a real infatuation with that movie, so much so that in the 80's our badly off film industry produced numerous imitations of Conan the Barbarian. The spaghetti-Conans were clumsy imitations, shot with ridiculous budgets in the countryside around Rome (a location that was anything but epic). The Italian fake-Conans were called: Ator (Ator the Invincible, Ator 2, Iron Warrior, Quest for the mighty sword), Gunan (Gunan il Guerriero), Sangraal (Sangraal - la spada di fuoco), Ilias (Conquest), Thor (Il Trono di Fuoco) and, unfortunately, none of them had the charisma of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan :)
(Miles O'Keefe and Sabrina Siani in "Ator l'invincibile", 1982)
(Pietro Torrisi in "Sangraal - la spada di fuoco", 1983)
(Andrea Occhipinti in "Conquest", 1983)
Not even the soundtracks of these films reminded us of the majesty of Poledouris' soundtrack, although we like some of them very much (expecially Conquest's electronic soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti and Sangraal's orchestral soundtrack by Claudio Campanino):
Claudio Simonetti "Conquest" O.S.T. (1983)
Claudio Campanino "Sangraal - La spada di fuoco" O.S.T. (1982)
Anyway, even here at HDK we have our fake-Conan and he's called… CRO-MAN!
A brilliant cross between Conan and He-man from the Master of the Universe series, created by our German friend Lukas of UNDERWORLD MUSCLE Toys and Enterteinment. Underworld Muscle has produced a series of Mattel-style action-figures of Cro-man and characters from his universe:
Underworld Muscle at BIGCARTEL
It was a pleasure for us to create the soundtrack of the adventures of Croman with the involvement of the barbarous GNOLL ensemble. Obviously GNOLL, with his legendary arrogance, challenged the master Poledouris on his own pitch:
The Cro-man soundtrack was released in September 2020 on cassette by HDK; the j-card contains the complete catalog of Underworld Muscle CRO-MAN action fugures:
The cassette contains a bonus track: the TV theme song of the Cro-man cartoon (which doesn't exist for now, but tomorrow… who knows?).
The GNOLL "Croman" cassette is available in the HDK Shop for those who would like to purchase it!
Excelsior!