Lang’s Metropolis is an awe-inspiring feat of science fiction, and considered to be one of the great masterpieces of silent cinema. Over the years there have been numerous projects that reimagine the film with music, so we’ve decided to compile a list of notable Metropolis soundtracks for your enjoyment.

Although Metropolis is a silent film, when it first premiered in Berlin in 1927 it was accompanied by a score composed by Gottfried Huppertz. Huppertz’s composition was inspired by Wagner and Strauss, and the original score includes quotes from both Rouget de Lisle’s ‘La Marseillaise’ and the medieval Latin poem ‘Dies Irae’. The music was even heard on set during the filming of Metropolis, as the German composer often played piano to inform the actors’ performances. 

The version of Metropolis that premiered in 1927 was drastically altered to appease the American market and the Berlin film censorship office, and although there were a couple of attempts to restore the film in the eighties, it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that the first comprehensive restoration was carried out. In 2001, Gottfried’s full score was recorded for the first time by the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken for the film’s global theatrical and DVD release. Numerous live performances of the score were carried out in the proceeding years, with the most notable being the performance of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frank Strobel, for the film’s complete restoration premiere in 2010.

When the pioneering electronic musician and ‘Father of Disco’ Giorgio Moroder decided to re-release Metropolis in the early eighties, he instigated a three-year restoration process that added color tinting, subtitles, and a shiny new synth-driven soundtrack. It was a bold, confident move by a visionary artist who had previous experience when it came to writing film music. His score for the 1979 film Midnight Express saw him take home an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and in 1983 audiences were drooling over his iconic soundtrack for Brian De Palma’s Scarface.

In a pre-digital world. restoring a film like Metropolis was a gargantuan task that required near frame by frame splicing and color washing, much of which the Italian musician carried out at home. Giorgio didn’t pull any punches when enlisting artists to feature on the soundtrack either, with Freddy Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Adam Ant, Pat Benetar, John Anderson, and Billy Squier all providing the star power on the track listing. Although Moroder’s approximation of Metropolis divided critics and fans alike (it earned the unwanted distinction of two Razzie nominations in 1985) the soundtrack provides a zeitgeist-infused snapshot of 1980’s pop melodrama, and instigated future restoration projects down the line.

The next notable Metropolis soundtrack came from another legend of dance music: Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills. A lifelong fan of science-fiction, the DJ and producer saw electronic music as being steeped in afrofuturism, and consciously developed his Axis label into a vehicle for conceptual explorations of the third kind. His Metropolis soundtrack was released on Axis in 2000, and is a shadowy, pulsing techno ode to science fiction’s first film. Mills used the dark vision behind the film’s dystopian aesthetic to inform his soundtrack, and drew on his own experience of growing up in Detroit, a crumbling industrial wasteland that had been in decline since losing its place at the heart of America’s automobile industry. 

Mills decided to cut Metropolis to fit his soundtrack, reducing the length from two and half hours to a little over an hour. His version of the film screened around the world at venues including the Museum of Music in Paris, London's Royal Albert Hall, and high profile events like the Vienna International Film Festival. Since then, Jeff has scored some 20 films, and provided another contemporary take on Fritz Lang’s work by writing a fresh soundtrack for Woman in the Moon in 2016.

Metropolis Rescore is the title of The New Pollutants’ original soundtrack for the post-reconstruction version of Metropolis. The Australian duo—aka Benjamin Speed and Tyson Hopprich—arrived in the early 2000’s with a blend of lo-fi, trip hop and electronica, and debuted their score at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2005. 

The soundtrack was conceived, composed, and recorded over the course of a year, and has been described as "an infectious and unique approach ranging from Germanic trip hop and lo-fi electronica to unforgettable classical and breathtaking cinematica." Metropolis Rescore succeeds in transporting you directly into the acidic hell of Lang’s skewed vision of the future, where the proletariat are considered to be little more than fuel for the fires of industry that lie beneath the city.  

The New Pollutants’ rescored version of Lang’s classic film received a warm reception at Next Wave Festival at ACMI in Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games and the Revelation Perth International Film Festival in 2006, and it was also performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2010. Soon afterwards, The New Pollutants updated and extended their score to match the 2010 restoration version of Metropolis, which includes 30 minutes of newly found footage.

Aside from the fresh soundtracks from established artists and composers we've mentioned, Metropolis has also had new life breathed into it by independent filmmakers and ardent fans of the sci-fi classic.

Filmmaker John McWilliam made his own homage to the art deco silent movie masterpiece by recutting it for a modern audience and setting it to the music of famed German electronic innovators Kraftwerk. McWilliam's version is much slimmer than the original, running at one hour and 23 minutes, a feat he managed to achieve in part by removing the subtitle cards between shots and placing them over the film footage instead. Kraftwerk, with their mechanistic style and preoccupation with technology, are a perfect fit for Lang's industrial cityscape, and their album The Man Machine that features on this edit was heavily inspired by Metropolis.

On YouTube, there are numerous edits of key scenes in the film featuring overdubbed sound effects and alternate soundtracks. One user, Peter Jones, reimagines the movie's famous transformation scene where robot Maria is brought to life, by setting it to 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' by Edvard Grieg, accompanied by a slew of SFX. As one of the most influential silent films in history, Metropolis is a blank canvas for creative reinterpretation and rescoring, and edits like this one are a great way for fans to feel part of Fritz Lang's legacy.

The final chapter of the Metropolis Ark orchestral series is Metropolis Ark 5—an epic arsenal of inspiration for cinematic trailers, scores, underscoring, and grand musical statements. While the five-part series is a cohesive collection, each has its own unique character, and Metropolis Ark 5 is distinguished by its considered functionality. You can produce instantly dramatic parts using emotive chords and eerie tensions, and even call upon Kraftwerk-esque electronic textures via a hand-picked collection of vintage analog synths and modular systems. Get Metropolis Ark 5 now, or grab the entire series at a discounted price.