Midnight Syndicate

As I was tootling around the Amazon.com website last year looking for scary things as I was waking up, I came across a few groups who cater to the haunt/Goth community. I bought two, one from another group, and one from Midnight Syndicate. The CDs arrived a few days later, and I ripped off the plastic on both and popped them in my garage's cheapie CD player.

The first one was o.k. Moody, scary to a point. Pretty good. When the disc ended, I took off my latex gloves (I was elbow-deep in carpet glue, constructing Stewie, at the time) and I put in Midnight Syndicate's The 13th Hour as I read the back cover. Founded by Edward Douglas, Midnight Syndicate includes the talents of his co-composer, Gavin Goszka. I was blown away.

I'm sure all you haunters have known about this group for ages, and have used their music to enhance the dark settings of your haunts. But ShellHawk has pointed out previously that she misses a lot of what's going on in the outside world, hasn't she?

I listened to this album several times over the next few days, its orchestral heartbeat sometimes my only companion in The Garage of Doom as I was building Stewie. A neighbor wandered in one very hot afternoon as I was listening and building, and commented on the dark sound emanating from my Big Lots Special CD player.

"Wow," he said, "That sure sounds sinister."

"Oh. Yeah," I replied nonchalantly, not telling him this was the eighth listen. "I'm vetting some music for the display."

"You must have some really weird dreams," he joked.

I just smiled, thinking, "You don't know the half of it."

Since then, The 13th Hour has been joined by other albums by Midnight Syndicate, the latest one being The Dead Matter: Cemetary Gates.

In researching for this post, I was delighted to discover this latest offering from the group is from a real movie soundtrack, the release slated for sometime this year.

Starring Andrew Divoff and my own favorite, Tom Savini, this zombie/vampire movie trailer looks promising. One of the co-producers is Robert Kurtzman of From Dusk Till Dawn fame, so you know you're in for a chilling ride of gore and violence.

Find recent interviews here at Fearnet, and at Fangoria, here.

In reading over the info on their latest offering, I was pleased to find that this movie project is a re-make of a movie Douglas had made for a whopping $2000. I've always felt that movies did not have to be expensive to be good, that the story is what should carry the movie. If the movie lives up to the soundtrack, it should be a heartstopper, indeed!

Check out the group's bio here, as they say it better than I could.