An almost three hour instrumental soundtrack, longer than the feature film it was written for. It continues the path laid out by Nine Inch Nails’ surprise Ghosts self-release and the Oscar-winning The Social Network electronic score. Again working with David Fincher, this time the NIN’s production duo recorded over a year while the film was still in pre-production.

37 or the 39 tracks are instrumental pieces containing ambient drones and treated instruments that evoke the stark Scandinavia winter. Given the film’s dark subject matter (men hating women), a common post-production effect is applying decay with atonal chords (think the opening notes of “The Perfect Drug”) and glitch effects that hook into the protagonist’s cyberpunk character.

The instrumentals are bookend by two female-fronted pop song covers, credit intro “Immigrant Song” (Led Zeppelin) with Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O and credit scroll “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” (Bryan Ferry) with How to Destroy Angel’s Mariqueen Maandig Reznor. Given the wait-time between the two “proper” songs, a sit-down listen to this soundtrack is likely only for NIN diehards.