First off, for anyone that remembers this movie, I generally feel sorry for you. This was one of the most notable box office bombs of the ‘90s. Schwarzenegger and company had a hell of a dud on their hands with the film itself, but the soundtrack was one of the most notable and most successful of the decade.
Spawning no less than five singles, the soundtrack outlived the film then and still does. Things kick off with AC/DC’s rockin’ “Big Gun,” their first new track in three years and one of their last really great songs. It’s a hell of a way to start off a soundtrack. Careening as it does through what was popular at the time, this disc gives us two brand new tracks from Alice In Chains. Of the two, “What the Hell Have I” is the one that holds up the best and still sounds great all these years later.
There’s also a new ballad from Def Leppard, seen here riding the crest of their last wave of popularity. “Two Steps Behind” ended up becoming a huge hit for them at the time, but the song blows now and is best consigned to the dustbin. On the other hand, “Angry Again” from Megadeth was one of the band’s last great cuts and marked the beginning of the end of their classic sound before they went all radio-friendly and crap.
But the two most interesting tracks come from the least likely sources: on one hand, you’ve got “Swim” from Fishbone. Now, this was my first introduction to Fishbone, and though it was miles away from what the band had become known for, it instantly became a favorite of mine and one that still sends me slammin’ every time I hear it. The other hand contains “Cock The Hammer” from Cypress Hill, which was completely out of the blue in terms of tracklisting, but it ultimately works so well and helps to take some of the spotlight away from Queensryche and Aerosmith.
If it wasn’t for the title track, done by Tesla with an instrumental from Michael Kamen and a young Buckethead, this would be the hard rock equivalent of the “Singles” soundtrack. But since this was one of the first records I fell in love with as a lad – and it still holds up all these years later – I can be happy with that.
