kevin-manthei
Latest
Jukebox Heroes: Chatting with Neverwinter's Kevin Manthei
This week on Jukebox Heroes, we're sitting down with Cryptic Studios Composer Kevin Manthei to talk about his work on the studio's most recent title, Neverwinter. So Kevin, Can you introduce yourself and give us a little background on you and your history with the company? Kevin Manthei: Hi! I am Kevin Manthei, a Minnesota-born, California-living composer. I write music for film, TV and games. I have been doing this for over 20 years and have worked with most of the big publishers in the gaming world and have scored music on feature and indie films, television shows, and animated projects. Currently I just finished scoring the Guardians of the Galaxy section of Disney's Infinity 2 video game and am in the middle of scoring Season 3 of the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series for Marvel/Disney XD. I also recently started work on the animated series Transformers: Robots In Disguise for Hasbro/The Hub network. I have been working with Cryptic on music for its games since City of Villains. I have scored music for City of Villains, Champions Online, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. Each project I worked on for more than a year, and each game has about 100 minutes of music I scored.
Jukebox Heroes: Star Trek Online's soundtrack
As a franchise, Star Trek is replete with terrific (and iconic) music. Star Trek VI remains one of my all-time favorite film scores, and who can listen to the opening notes of The Next Generation without being able to whistle and/or hum the whole thing? Of course, Star Trek has a lot of bad and forgettable music as well, which is probably par for a combined work of hundreds upon hundreds of hours of television and cinema. I had high hopes for Star Trek Online's score upon first logging into the game, and the opening theme certainly did not disappoint. Kevin Manthei (Champions Online, City of Villains) delivers a stirring title track that is also one of my favorites, although the remainder of the score is much more lopsided. Some of it is so generic and harsh on the ears that I ended up turning off the soundtrack when I played STO. That's a shame because there are several equally excellent tracks deserving of a listen. So today we're going to the stars. I hope you packed your undies and a warm sweater.
