The soundtrack for 300 was controversial due to its heavy borrowing of themes from film scores by Elliot Goldenthal, amongst others.[5][6][7] On August 3, 2007, Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledged this in a statement.[8] The matter was settled amicably with the soundtrack credits being subsequently described as adapted from material by Elliot Goldenthal.[citation needed]
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.[9] 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. This required an undertaking by both Bates and his team. For 4 months, they clocked upwards of 100-hour work weeks to produce this finished product.[10] After all the work, they had a total of 29 different soundtracks giving a combined total of 64:34 of music.[11] "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.[citation needed]
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.[13] In 2017, they worked for the follow-up Heaven Upside Down with a world tour, starting July 20, in Budapest,[14] 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.[15]