Midnight Syndicate

Anyone reading my blog knows the importance I put on music and sound, particularly when it comes to horror. A soundtrack makes or breaks ambiance, the most essential element of creating fear. We all know it, the screeching strings in Psycho, to the mounting drums leading us down the path of a on-screen jump scare. Akira is the master of bringing horror to heart-pounding life with his sound effects and his music tracks are stand alone.

But the masters of ambience are Midnight Syndicate. It blows my mind when I talk about them and get blank stares in return. How is it possible that everyone and their mother doesn't know about these guys? They are stuffed awkwardly into an extremely limited category of Halloween soundtracks. I hate that. While it's applicable, it gives the impression that they are gimmicky, one demential and translucent. It couldn't get anymore incorrect then that.

Midnight Syndicate crafts beautiful, haunting, imagination provoking music. Anyone who listens to Midnight Syndicate only in the October haunt season is out of their minds. Midnight Syndicate is anytime music, all the time music.

Their albums are thematic and each tells a complete story. Lurking in crypts to exploring a haunted victorian mansion, they take you for an unforgettable journey. Key here, is that the journey is through your own imagination. While there is a theme, nothing is dictated to you. You are allowed to conjure your own images and explore your own, personal darkness.

Their albums are seriously underpriced and can be found at their website, here.

And for anyone, and you should be, curious, here is a track from one of my favorite albums of all time, The 13th Hour.



Due to me twisting some arms, front man Edward Douglas is coming to CONvergence, the largest sci-fi convention in the midwest! If everything goes according to plan, I'll get to interview him about his work and new film, The Dead Matter.

If you don't know Midnight Syndicate, you are missing out.

Silent Hill: Downpour

There are few horror games-- substantially less if you take away fast paced action shooters, like Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. The Silent Hill series reins supreme over psychological horror, and it's a well deserved spot at the top. The original Silent Hill was the first true psychological horror game, followed by the amazing (and amazingly fucked up) Silent Hill 2. The third installment followed suit, offering a twisted plot, amazing characters and horrifying monsters. Silent Hill 4 is where it fell apart.

Silent Hill 4: The Room was never intended to be a Silent Hill title. It was a side project of Team Silent, exploring different creative directions. Konami feared the title would not move, so they slapped the Silent Hill brand on it. It sold well, but left fans with a foul taste in their mouths. It was a far cry from the depraved and deep fare that they had loyally followed.

But in business, money matters. Silent Hill: Origins was released for the PSP, sloppily billed as a prequel and more relevantly, handed off to Climax Studios for development. And then, Silent Hill 5: Homecoming, which again switched hands to be developed by Double Helix. And then, not to stop milking the cash cow, Silent Hill Shattered Memories.

And then there was the movie. And now another in the works, jumping on the 3D bandwagon.

Silent Hill, a story about a small town had no home of it's own anymore. With each change in hands, the series lost something more. The stories became shallow, the action overplayed, the creatures tired and the soul-- and fear, gone.

But the series still had one thing, which was their strongest asset. Akira Yamaoka.

If there is anyone alive on the face of this earth who understands the fundamentals of raw fear, it's this man. A producer and composer for each of the installments, he brought something irreplaceable to the table. To me, his scores were the most effective and frightening aspects of the games, blurring the line between game and reality. His music and sound effects were something palpable, something undeniable and most importantly, something horrifying.

As of 2009, he's left Silent Hill behind him.

Now comes Silent Hill 8: Downpour. Miles away from it's origin, without even a nod from Team Silent, and abandoned by the heart of it all, Akira Yamaoka.

I have to admit, I'm curious. With the shortage of horror games, I feel I should take what I can get. The series should have ended as a trilogy, brilliantly. Instead, we have ten titles, each successively worse and further away from what birthed it's rabid fandom.

It's time to move out of Silent Hill.

Bug

For many horror fans, William Friedkin’s Bug was a tremendous let down. The blame for this can be clearly blamed on the vague and, I admit it, misleading, advertising. A movie about a smarmy hotel filled with deadly creepy crawlies? Standard horror. The film was billed as a fast paced fright fest-- a far cry from what it turned out to be. An extremely slow burn, immensely smart psychological character study.

And that's exactly what it was. An agonizing trip down the rabbit hole of paranoia and self-destruction.

I almost missed this film. Honestly, I didn't want to see a movie called Bug. It conjured images of tired plot lines and buzzing antagonists relying on human aversion to insects. Cheated uneasiness. A title says a lot about a piece, whatever medium it may be. The problem with the title was that it was vague enough to bring about facetious assumptions. Bug, as in hidden surveillance. Bug, as in insect. Bug, as in annoy. The title, coupled with the marketing was preposterously misleading giving this film an aura of dumb, panicked and generic film. Upon viewing, the title was proven relevant-- and certainly appropriate but it nearly caused me to electively miss out. I clearly remember seeing the theatrical trailer for this and it was the presentation name that prevented me from watching it for years. Horror films come in four flavors-- camp, slasher, paranormal and psychological horror, with the latter being the purpose I sit through all the shit. The psychology of fear is absolute fascinating and frightening in itself and there is a lot to be said for media that wades into that darkness with a serious intent to explore it. If a horror film has the balls to leave tired expectations at the door and attempt a sober approach I'll give it instantaneous credit. Most horror films that do so fail, but this was not one of them. The title presented the contents of it's package in a way that was wildly discrediting.

Phenomenal acting, disturbingly tragic story, and sickly claustrophobic.

Why it's scary: This film leaves all of the gimmicks at the door. It's raw, it's ugly and it's real. This isn't a frolic into dark fantasy, but an uncomfortably close look at vulnerability and paranoia.