How Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament Conceived the Eerie, Experimental Score for ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi “Under the Banner of Heaven,” the grim, century-hopping true crime series of Mormon fundamentalists committing a savage double murder in the name of God, rests its weary soul on June 2.

But the music lives on for fans of Pearl Jam, whose bassist and co-founder Jeff Ament was called upon to score the FX series.In collaboration with screenwriter Dustin Lance Black — the writer of “Milk,” for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay — the first-time composer was tasked with recording an equally-atmospheric version of vengeance and misery to soundtrack devout detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and his battle against good and evil, inside and outside the realm of his faith.

Ament enlisted the band’s current second guitarist, Josh Klinghoffer, as well as instrumentalists John Wicks and Josh Evans, to create an oppressive and noisy score while the series was still in production. (“Under the Banner of Heaven [Music from and Inspired by the FX Series] Original Score Soundtrack” will be released via Hollywood Records on June 10.)“We made the music in the spirit of what we thought the series would be, as we hadn’t seen any footage when we started, and wouldn’t, really, until near the end and we saw vague dailies,” says Ament.“It was incredibly untraditional,” adds Black. “By the time we got near the end, Jeff had already sent me this whole bed of sound that we explored together.

Once there, he had built themes that would help us with our point of view, our sense of place and person.”The tone of Ament’s score complements Black’s stormy “cautionary tale where following ancient rules written by men a long time ago leads to a road to ruin” as its author states.