Back in 2013, I saw Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats open for Black Sabbath at the LG Arena. That probably gives you some idea of how long they’ve been doing this.
Shapes Of Midnight is their seventh album and represents something of a return to their usual sound following 2024’s Nell’ Ora Blu, the soundtrack to an imaginary Italian horror film that existed only in their minds.
This time, Kevin Starrs has taken partial inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque Of The Red Death. However, the record is also rooted firmly in the present, which is probably nightmarish enough for anyone.
“House By The Grave” begins with a groove, a solo and an organ that adds a touch of Deep Purple. More than that, though, there’s always something unsettling beneath the surface, even as it builds towards its crescendo.
That atmosphere is crucial to everything Uncle Acid do. When they lock into the groove on the title track, there’s a hum and a fuzz, but also a gift for harmonies and an ability to turn everything into a nightmare within minutes. Starrs clearly enjoys cutting loose on guitar, too.
“When Evil Wakes” could easily have been unearthed from one of those lost compilations of obscure 1960s psychedelia. “They’ll do what it takes,” it warns, and you’d be right to feel concerned, but the guitars are so hypnotic that you can happily lose yourself in them anyway.
All of a sudden, “Don’t Let It Control You” injects some energy into proceedings. There’s even a gallop in the bass, although the clever use of keyboards ensures that the unease never entirely disappears.
“Psycho On The Loose” possesses urgency and drive, but something remains slightly off-kilter. Here, it’s the strange synth sounds lurking in the background, ensuring that the song never feels quite safe.
Arguably the highlight, “I Won’t Sleep (‘Til You’re Gone)” features a wonderful Thin Lizzy-style guitar line. “Flood the world with hate and lies,” Starrs sings – possibly about Reform UK, although maybe that’s just me. The unexpected saxophone flourish is yet another thing you didn’t see coming.
There’s more than a touch of the occult beneath “The Other Side Of The Sky”. “There’s nobody coming home tonight,” they casually point out, as if this is something entirely normal.
Likewise, the closing “Sleep No More” offers only “cold comfort for you as you sleep no more”. It’s absolutely nightmarish, allowing the music to meander exactly where it wants to before the darkness finally closes in.
What an incredible band Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats are. There really is nobody else who sounds quite like them, yet their songs always feel somehow familiar, as though they were discovered abandoned at the back of a field after some psychedelic festival in the late 1960s.
They have no intention of changing, either. Shapes Of Midnight is something of a return to form and proof that, more than a decade after I first encountered them, Uncle Acid remain masters of making the familiar sound deeply disturbing.
Rating: 8/10
