This is probably my favorite project I have worked on and is almost exactly the album I set out to make. It's still a bit awkward in places, and far from perfect, but I find it dark, rich, complex, and a great watch/listen. I may be a bit biased though. Tell me what you think, feedback is always welcome!
About the audio: I tried to really step up what I was doing to create these tracks, part of that was switching out the audio workstation to Reaper and part was working less by cutting up wave files and more with software synthesizers and drum programming. I think this album is about a 50% split.
About half of these tracks began life arranged in ACID before being exported and finished in Reaper, the rest are purely in Reaper. The version of ACID I have gets crashy around serious VST's, so working in Reaper was a must to continue learning how to make decent music.
About the video: As the Villainy album before, I tried to compile a mixture of films that are well-known and others that are not. About half was created in October, which may have influenced the abundance of horror films. I also wanted to distinguish it from the Villainy album, so leaned into a darker feeling.
Enmity - Nightmare Castle (1965)
An Italian gothic horror film that borders on softcore torture porn for the time. Chopping the film down for a strong visual story was difficult, as it gets twisted and has some great scenes. One of my favorite tracks, even with the slightly awkward transitions before the finale. A great opener, I think.
Blood of the Wolf - The Mad Monster (1942)
So bad its good horror drama featuring a mad scientist with bonus werewolf badassery. Great film, track is near perfect, I put extra efforts into remastering it and sounds great.
The Enchanter - Svengali (1931)
I really dug the exaggerated expressionist backdrops to this film, the playing with perspective, and the awesome cityscape model that was created. I had been playing around with layering multiple synths together to make new sounds and found something that fit the vibe here perfectly. Sometimes it sounds a little jarring in its placement, but I think its placement in this position really helped the pacing of the album.
The Crypt - The Terror (1963)
Filmed with leftover sets, shot mostly in two days, without a real script, this film was a disaster. But it features a young Jack Nicholson and those sets are really great. It was a struggle to come up with any real story to chop this into, but the track fits it perfectly and was the first time I played around with strings.
Revenge - Dead Men Walk (1943)
An unexpectedly entertaining film, with the same actor playing both main roles. There's probably an earlier example of this in film history, but here it was cleverly executed and George Zucco does a great job of being two brothers who are completely different. After The Crypt I was eager to find another use for strings, and while I was initially happy with the track I now consider it the weakest of the album.
Darkness Calls - Condemned to Live (1935)
This video is patched together from three different sources of this film, all having different sections missing. The most complete version being so badly compressed that it looked like internet video from the 90's. The film is a vampire drama and spends too much time lamenting, but it does have some great style.
No More Room in Hell - Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Legendary film, the birth of the modern zombie, the most profitable indie film ever at the time, and directly led to the MPAA rating system being rushed into use a month later. This is my second time setting music to this film (the first was a very long time ago) and I spent a lot of time and firsts here. First fully programmed drums, first time setting up guitar distortion, first time using an organ with a Leslie speaker effect (which I would use again on Hypersleep). I cut the film as to hide the zombies until the end, letting the actors argue and be terrified over an unseen horror. One of my favorite tracks for sure.
The End - Last Man on Earth (1964)
Another classic, a re-telling of I Am Legend with Vincent Price and some great sets filmed in Rome. I tried to keep the track simple and catchy. Alternating then mixing together depressive isolation with a strong resolve, ultimately fading to hopelessness. The guitar samples I found (I can't play and that sound is too good to be from software, I think) led directly into the Star Force tracks which later became the Odyssey album. While this was not originally intended to be the last track of the album, how could I end it any other way?
