Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats: Two Minutes To Midnight
Shapes of Midnight, the new album from UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS sees the band returning to their hard rocking ways after their Giallo horror honouring last album, 2024’s Nell’ Ora Blu. With their new album, they blow the roof off with a collection of anthems that will more than make their mark in their live arsenal. To celebrate Shapes of Midnight, we caught up with lead guitarist and vocalist Kevin Starrs to hear all about the album and the gloriously macabre return of UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS.
We begin with Kevin telling us about the writing process of Shapes of Midnight and where the album goes with its sound. “A lot of the songs were actually written at the same time as the last album. I was working on both at the same time, and then obviously Nell’ Ora Blu, we had to finish that off, and that was a priority. But yeah, it was always the plan to do more of a hard rock record and it just seemed like it all came together that way.”
Kevin continues by revealing that Shapes of Midnight was always going to be its own separate entity compared to their previous album. “It was always going to be a separate thing, just totally different ideas. Although saying that, a lot of the instruments that we were using on the Nell’ Ora Blu, like the synthesisers, the sax, we’ve taken that onto this album as well. So there is a continuation of some of the sounds.”
Shapes of Midnight was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, a period that was thrilling experience for the band, as Kevin enthuses. “That was incredible. Obviously, it is somewhere that we’ve always wanted to record, and they just let us do whatever we wanted pretty much. We got to use all the microphones that we asked for. All the classic expensive German microphones. We just all got into the one room. All our amps were there. All the drum kits were there, obviously, everything’s so loud that it’s bleeding into the drum head, the drum mics, but, for me. That’s the best to record in because it kind of adds an atmosphere, and everything just sort of blends in and glues together, especially when you record to tape as well.”
With UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS being dubbed the ‘Evil Beatles’, recording at Abbey Road was a dream come true for the band. “That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to record there, and all the mics that we used were used by THE BEATLES on their sessions. So I deliberately wanted to have those mics and those mixing desks that they would have used back then, just to experiment to see ‘what would a heavy band sound like using this old 50s and 60s technology’, and so that’s what we did.”
Kevin then reveals what Shapes of Midnight is about thematically and inspired by. “It’s somewhat inspired by the general hellscape that we live in today, and obviously, the other influence, which was kind of an unintentional influence, was the Masque of the Red Death. I’d come up with this story that there was a big mansion and all these rich people, were locked away, while everybody else was suffering outside, and I come up this story, then I realised, Poe was talking about this, 100 years ago. This is exactly the Masque of the Red Death story!”
Once the album releases in September, UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS will be hitting the road and as their recent live dates have proved, the songs from Shapes of Midnight will form a big part of their set. “We’re just trying to figure out putting set lists together and stuff, and rehearsing some of the newer material. We were in Europe during the summer, and we played one of the new songs. Don’t Let It Control You, and it’s always kind of weird when you play stuff that people haven’t really hard, but the response from that was amazing!”
Those European summer dates included a now infamous appearance at the Rokslide festival, invoking a certain egotistical cartoon band, GORILLAZ, the aftermath of which Kevin addresses. “I only put it up because we were basically dragged off stage, and we couldn’t tell anybody why we were taken off. I was getting so many messages from fans saying, ‘why did you just go off? You didn’t say anything. We travelled all this way to see you, and you just stormed off’. And I thought, that was nothing to do with us. So I felt like I had to tell people, give them the courtesy of saying why that happened. But yeah, we never expected it to go crazy like that!”
Happy memories abound though, as Kevin tells of festival highlights for the band. “Hellfest is always good in France. That’s a really festival. We did one up in Scandinavia with Robert Plant on the bill. BLONDIE were on the bill. TELEVISION. It was quite a nice mix of bands. So we did our set, and then we got to just go around and watch all these great bands from side to stage.”
Talk of highlights for UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS continues and we finish with Kevin declaring the two biggest ones for him. “I mean, obviously supporting BLACK SABBATH around Europe and the UK. That was a huge highlight, a huge honour for us. It was such a big thing for us to be able to do. Doing the first US tour as well. That was really exciting because we sold out pretty much every show on that tour!”
Shapes Of Midnight is out now via Killer Candy Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS133 here.
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