It’s time to dump that Tarantula bootleg recording of John Scott’s masterful and magnificent score to The Final Countdown – we finally have a splendid and legitimate recording of the complete score, produced on Scott’s own label. This compelling 1980 film told the thrilling and compelling story about a modern-day nuclear aircraft carrier that, through the happenstance of a freak time-warp storm, is thrust back to 1941 on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. The score was Scott’s first major Hollywood assignment. Scott’s music is brassy and rich, constructed around a stalwart main theme performed mostly by the brass section. It’s thunderously heroic and full of militaristic pageantry though it never becomes clichéd or petty (a neat woodwind and string variation is heard in “The USS Nimitz on route;” the cue eventually opens up into a terrific rendition of the main theme). With 23 cues versus the original LP’s 15, the music is thrilling in its drive and power.