Nell’Ora Blu, a weird Italo-horror radio novella wandered off into the fog. Shapes Of Midnight walks back out of it, carrying a shovel to excacavate past graves.
This is the band’s seventh album, now on lead singer and lead guitarist Kevin Starrs’ own label, Killer Candy Records, and it points itself back to the early records: heavy, grimy, drenched in fuzz, hooks buried like treasure under a haunted lawn. It’s a real return to form to stuff like Blood Lust and even Mind Control, which are over a decade old…
Though Shapes of Midnight isn’t a time machine. The first albums sounded like tapes nobody was supposed to find. This one sounds like people who know exactly where the tapes are, more produced and less like a horror movie. They cut it at Abbey Road, and the clean room tone shows. The menace is still there, just better lit than it used to be, and the old claustrophobia only comes through in flashes. As nostalgia goes, it’s restrained. They revisit the sound without trying to live in it, which does makes sense, but it made me want to re-listen to Blood Lust.
The songs that work, really work. “House By The Grave” makes a sharp, creeping opener, and “Don’t Let It Control You” is the album at its most urgent: short, fast and a little deranged. Elsewhere, it settles for solid over thrilling. Not a classic like Blood Lust, but a confident step back into the dark, and the best stretches reward the wait.
