That includes creepy Halloween music.
And that, in turn, includes the work of Edward Douglas and Gavin Goszka, a.k.a. Midnight Syndicate: a two-man tag team of the musical macabre. I was thrilled to meet them at GenCon and delighted that they were kind enough to provide me with a review copy of their latest CD: The 13th Hour.
In my previous – and first – CD review, for Cyoakha Grace O’Manion’s Unknown Music from Dream-Quest of Kadath, I looked at each individual song’s potential use in an RPG session.
I’m not going to do that here, for three reasons.
First, I suspect that some readers found that approach just a little tedious.
Secondly, you can see the list of songs and hear snippets of each and every one of them on the CD’s page at Amazon.com.
And third, I don’t think such an approach would do the CD justice. Because while Unknown Music from Dream-Quest of Kadath was the soundtrack for a story – namely, the animated movie version of Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath – The 13th Hour is a story, albeit a story in musical form.
The CD cover and insert provide only tantalizing hints of what awaits: a journey into the mansion of the Haverghast family, founders of the Haverghast Asylum that was the setting for the group’s Gates of Delirium CD. And just how much of that journey the band conveys with only music, a smattering of unnerving sound effects, and some well-placed chilling voices from beyond the grave will astound you.
Opening with low, ominous music in the classic haunted house tradition, the CD segues into a non-musical walk up the forgotten path to the Victorian mansion – leaves crunching underfoot, crickets chirping, crows cawing.
Once the door to the mansion slams shut behind you, the orchestral horror ride begins.
A languid, melancholy piano piece paints a picture of cobwebbed rooms full of antique grandeur. A chilling surge of Phantom of the Opera-style pipe organ leaves no doubt that evil stirs in the house once more. Then a dizzying combination of classic Victorian and Gothic orchestration, modern horror music in the John Carpenter style, and chilling sound effects – including distant moans, footsteps in the dark, and voices from an ancient Victrola – draws you, drags you, and finally chases you through each and every nightmarish nook of Haverghast Mansion, sending you fleeing in a last desperate dash for the door as windows shatter, spirits wail, and the Haverghast family relives the night of their doom, their cursed mansion once again blasted out of all time and space.
Now, the individual songs definitely do lend themselves to various scenes in a horror roleplaying session, from stealthy investigations (“The Drawing Room”) to unseen menaces (“The Watcher”) to shocking revelations (“Gruesome Discovery”) to panicked flights (“The 13th Hour”). Halloween haunts far and wide use Midnight Syndicate’s work as their soundtrack with good reason, after all. Just beware of playing the CD straight through, unless you want to risk your players getting caught up in the music’s story to the detriment of your own.
The CD bears a label proclaiming its official approval for use in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. I certainly won’t argue that point, but will offer this caveat: despite a track called “Return of the Ancient Ones,” I didn’t hear a whole lot to suggest Lovecraftian horror. The music would work best with adventures presenting at least a veneer of more traditional horror – like, say, Victorian mansions. If you’re looking for a more surreal, mind-twisting sound that speaks to the sanity-blasting horrors of the Mythos, this probably isn’t it. But for Call of Cthulhu adventures with conventional horror trappings – as well as for games like Chill that make traditional horror their blood-and-butter – mood music doesn’t get any better than this.
Buy it now… for the hour groweth late.
