New Midnight Syndicate Release Appears Out of the Darkness

The folks from Midnight Syndicate have returned with a new concept album, The Brimstone Club, a half-hour musical excursion into darkness and the imagination. As with previous releases, this one creates a unique backdrop to an “imagined” film this time inspired by a 19th-century Parisian cabaret that had a devilish theme, the Cabaret de L’enfer. The listener is invited into the soundworld to create their own possible story inspired by the music herein.

The title track has the sort of Gothic mystery around it with some distant sounds adding atmosphere to the piano line. It has an almost Elfman-esque quality at times and the tracks that follow will feature variations on this idea. “Saturnalia” has a melancholy Gothic melody that has the requisite odd shifts in thematic direction with its minor-mode harmonies. Things begin to take a slight macabre twist as we head into “Vodou” with jungle rhythms, chanting, and other sounds adding to the effect. “Glamoury” returns us to a driving rhythm under a dark, thematic statement presented in different instrumental colors. In a way, the tracks might suggest specific acts on the cabaret stage where the music accompanies the imagined actions. This comes to the fore in “The Incomparable Mr. Jingles” which features audience “interaction” with the act on stage. “Amber & Oak” creates a more funereal organ back drop with an off-kilter thematic line that is off key and adds to the unsettled atmosphere. A gorgeous violin solo takes over this somber melody in one of the more intriguing tracks here. At the center point, we go “Behind the Curtain” as more ghostly sounds begin to add a sense of creepiness to the proceedings which ramps up in the atmospheric “Ghost Light” and is given a more direct voice in “Lacricia”. “Descending” feels like a bit of connective narrative underscoring as we head into the final moments of the release. More effects and sounds then appear in the unsettling “Ritual” before we move into “Underbelly” which feels like the big active release of the music before we return to the effects and sounds in the final, chilling “The Chosen”.

The Brimstone Club features a beautiful, sad theme that casts itself across the different scenarios of the album. There is not quite the circus-like cabaret atmosphere that one might expect in this club, but more a darker, ghostly presence that slowly wafts itself across the presentation.

Listen to or purchase The Brimstone Club: https://midnightsyndicate.fanlink.to/thebrimstoneclub

Watch The Brimstone Club album trailer: https://youtu.be/BfFesV1Bx9M

Midnight Syndicate Legions of the Night Fan Community: https://legions.midnightsyndicate.com/join-legions-of-the-night

Midnight Syndicate official website: http://www.MidnightSyndicate.com