Tyler Bates

Early life, family and education

Bates was born on June 5, 1965, He began his career in the 1990s scoring low-budget films like The Last Time I Committed Suicide, and Denial. In the meantime, he was a member of the alternative rock Pet alongside Lisa Papineau; the band released their eponymous debut in 1996. On August 3, 2007, Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledged this in a statement. The matter was settled amicably with the soundtrack credits being subsequently described as adapted from material by Elliot Goldenthal.

Bates composed the score for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Having worked with James Gunn in the past, Bates had a good idea on how Gunn wanted things done. Before any of the cinematography started, Gunn had Bates write several themes prior to shooting so the scene could be matched to the music instead of the score being created to fit the scene. This required cooperation between Bates and Gunn in advance since these scores would be in the final piece, instead of a temporary filler acting as a placeholder. They influenced the performance on set, which required an undertaking by both Bates and his team. For four months, they clocked upwards of 100-hour work weeks to produce this finished product. After all the work, they had a total of 29 different soundtracks giving a combined total of 64:34 of music. "At least half the cues in the movie have more than 500 tracks of audio," Bates was quoted in an interview with Melinda Newman on HitFix. This was a result of there being orchestral passages that were doubled or tripled, choirs, overdubs, and other instrumentals.

That same year, Bates composed the score to the action film John Wick, collaborating with Joel J. Richard and Marilyn Manson. The film proved a surprise critical and financial success, and Bates returned to score its sequel John Wick: Chapter 2, and also its third and fourth installments. He and Richard also scored its 2025 spin-off Ballerina, replacing Marco Beltrami and Anna Drubich. He would later collaborate again with co-director David Leitch to score a spiritual successor, the Cold War-era spy thriller Atomic Blonde.

Bates composed the soundtrack for the PlayStation 3 games God of War: Ascension and Army of Two: The 40th Day, as well as the PlayStation 4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall. Most recently he composed for Crossfire.

Other projects In 2014, Bates co-wrote and produced Marilyn Manson's record The Pale Emperor. The album debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200, while the single "Deep Six" went on to chart higher than any other single by Marilyn Manson on Billboards Mainstream Rock Chart. Bates joined the band in 2015 as the lead guitarist for The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour. The album's song "Cupid Carries a Gun" was used as the opening title music of the TV show Salem, and Bates composed the show's score. In April 2015 he left Marilyn Manson to resume film work.

In October 2015, during a Q&A with Marilyn Manson at the Grammy Museum, Manson announced that he and Tyler were working on new music together again. In 2015 Loudwire listed "The Mephistopheles Of Los Angeles" No. 1 best rock track and Rolling Stone included The Pale Emperor in its Top 50 list of the best albums of 2015. He returned as the lead guitarist during the tour with Slipknot in July 2016. In 2017, they worked for the follow-up Heaven Upside Down with a world tour, starting July 20, in Budapest, playing more than 100 shows around the world. In January 2018, Bates announced via Twitter that he left the band and returned to his studio to work exclusively on film and television.

Tyler composed the song "Monsters After Dark" for the night Halloween mode of the ride Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!.

In 2021, Bates co-produced and played strings, percussion and guitar on Jerry Cantrell's album Brighten.

Discography Film scores

Television scores

Video game soundtracks

Own work Roseland with Azam Ali

With Marilyn Manson The Pale Emperor (2015) Heaven Upside Down (2017) One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 (2024) One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 (2026)

With Pet Pet (1996) (guitar, bass, backing vocals, production)

With Bush

The Kingdom (2020) (songwriting, production)

With Jerry Cantrell

Brighten (2021) (strings, percussion, guitar, production)