While the score for Nightbreed is no classic either, it is a rather unique entry in Elfman's career, for the composer rarely ventured into the large-scale horror before Sleepy Hollow finely tuned his skills in that realm. (Whereas Sleepy Hollow was a frightfully huge genre score, Elfman's The Frighteners was a far less creative and straight-laced attempt to scare an audience.) By comparison, Nightbreed has much more humor and beauty in its ranks, with a core of themes and motifs that remain largely tonal from start to finish. Instead of using only standard dissonant slashes and orchestral shrieking for its horror, Elfman establishes propulsive rhythms and overbearing orchestrations to achieve the right atmosphere. In the process of doing that, he carries over many of the funky instrumental elements from his mid-1980's efforts, making Nightbreed a potentially far more entertaining score for his fans than his other horror works. Utilizing a full choir and generous percussion section, Elfman's main two themes roll with elegance as they address the romanticism of the concept, all the while adorned with memorable plucking motifs for strings and the cascading four-note children's choral effect from Scrooged as a subtheme. The composer's thematic core is divided between a Midian motif and a destiny and rebirth theme, both of which explored in "Titles." The Midian motif is a set of descending pairs of notes heard immediately in that cue and extending to become frantic in "Dream" before forming an undulating string identity in "Scalping." It is twisted into a love theme in "Lori Enters Midian" and "Love Reprise" and provides the cyclical base to "Carnival" in lighter shades. With more forceful resolve, it battles the evil human material in "Militia Montage," punctuates the action in "Boone and Decker Duke It Out," slashes in the horror surprise to end "Finale," and offers brute force early in "End Credits." The destiny and rebirth theme, meanwhile, is the prettiest identity of the work, its rising three and four-note phrases of fantasy occupying the latter half of "Titles." It takes on a more dramatic stance in "Boone Dead" and "Boone's Back," rambles on piano and strings with a romantic tilt in "Rachel's Oratory," and becomes confrontational in "More Mayhem." As the idea matures, it adopts religious choral tones in "Two Reasons," slowly unfolds under the tumult of "Baphomet Calls," opens "Finale" with mystery and allure, and closes "End Credits" with quiet beauty.

While Elfman's two primary themes for Nightbreed clearly define its romantic inclinations, other ideas offer brute force or disturbing environments. A "beast" theme presents the glory of the monsters with demented choral lines in "Dream" and "Meat" and is adopted by the human hero himself by "Boone Transforms," eventually directly fighting the mob's militia tones in "Trouble in Midian." An outright villain theme is less defined, its creepy piano ambience in "Grinnell" and elsewhere. Straddling the line between all these identities is Elfman's circus theme, the descending four-note choral line from Scrooged that dominates the quirky character cue of "Carnival" and faintly returns as appropriate in "Ohnaka Go Boom!" This idea is extensively explored in "End Credits," however, by which point it becomes a direct preview of the Penguin material in Batman Returns. These themes are cleverly constructed for easy reference throughout the score, though with the constant bombardment of horror thrashing, it's hard not to return to "End Credits" as the easy highlight. One of the more intriguing elements of Nightbreed is that it exhibits a stylish usage of a South American pan flute to echo in the fog of mystery. Further pushing the diversity of the monsters, the composer also employs a Balinese gamelan and African drumming. Other instrumental uses of note include a standard flute fluttering with great skill in "Carnival Underground," the monstrously brutal percussive display (especially for seemingly uncontrolled timpani) in "Meat for the Beast," and the rolling piano under the title theme in "Rachel's Oratory." A harp shines in the more somber character cues for the primary themes. Some listeners may be bothered by the heavy borrowing in choral usage from Scrooged, however, as well as the in-joke of a country song on the album. "Country Skin" is actually an Oingo Boingo creation adapted sickly with a sense of humor and was recorded at a variety of speeds for this project. On the other hand, one fantastic action cue, "Berserker's Party," was composed by Shirley Walker during the chaotic re-editing of the film, and it uses a few of Elfman's motifs in more conventional orchestral action modes. An expanded Intrada Records album in 2024 provides more much horror filler than necessary and is short on the alternate score cues, concentrating on four versions of the song and related source material instead. The original album will suffice for most. While Nightbreed features bombastic horror exhibitions for most of its length, it has about fifteen minutes of truly beautiful writing by Elfman, and the score as a whole remains an ever-intriguing work.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download