Midnight Bandit unveils ten soundscapes inspired by Silent Hill franchise. Read more below.
Midnight Bandit doesn’t release records so much as open doors you weren't sure you wanted to find. Fog World, due August 10, 2025 via MorningStar Records, first crystallized when a teenager pressed play on Silent Hill and felt the room contract. Normal horror stayed on the other side of the glass; this one hauled the artist inside, smeared uncertainty across every surface, and whispered that nothing familiar could be trusted. The games themselves remained untouched (too immersive, too risky), but the atmosphere drilled in and refused to leave- a low hum rattling the spine whenever streetlights bent through mist. Years later, that hum is still there- thick as iron dust, and Midnight Bandit has molded it into an album that feels like wandering hometown streets while every landmark slides a few inches out of alignment.
The opening track, Brookhaven, sets the scene, as one wanders the walls of a long-abandoned hospital; once a center of life and promise, now with paint chipping and walls decaying. Lights flicker. Vents still rattle. It’s haunting not because it attacks, but because it waits just long enough for the listener to wonder whether the shadow on the wall belongs to anyone at all. Three cuts deeper, You Can’t Leave This Place pulls a crooked grin. Brushes kiss a ride‑cymbal in a jazz‑club shuffle, while an unsettlingly bright ambient soundscape lures the listener deeper. Just audibly behind the driving, light rhythm, something in the distance drags slightly off‑beat, threatening to destroy the facade. The groove feels like polite hotel staff who keep insisting the exits are “under renovation,” guiding guests down the same carpeted hallway until even their shoes begin to doubt the floor. As was once written: you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
The record concludes with the labyrinth’s heart: Judgement Day Cometh. Eight minutes, no straight lines. Snatches of earlier motifs surface, only to dissolve into low‑frequency rumbles and tape‑chewed voices. One moment, wind chimes flutter like a childhood memory; the next, sub‑bass rolls in hard enough to shake the windows. It's less of a conclusion, and more of an existential crossroad. When the last pulse lets go, the silence speaks louder than the experience ever could.
None of this gloom is posturing. Midnight Bandit has been writing in near‑total solitude for years; thousands of sketches on hard drives nobody else has spun up. The record’s weight comes from that persistence: fog as a daily climate rather than a trend, music as a flare fired into grey sky on the off‑chance someone else is lost out there too. Headphones put you on an empty main street at 2AM; speakers turn the living room into an observation deck over ground that won’t stay still.
Fog World doesn’t chase jump scares or spoon‑feed catharsis. It stands a few paces away, lantern held low, and asks how far you’re willing to follow. When the album drops on August 10, there will be no bright, shiny countdown clock, and no pyrotechnic stream. It will simply appear, like fog on water, already moving. Those who know what it feels like to be present yet unseen will recognize the texture instantly. And somewhere inside that drifting murk, Midnight Bandit keeps walking, hand barely visible but undeniably extended, proof that signals can still find each other even when the whole world feels to be nothing but a void.
Fog World releases on CD and LP on the MorningStar Records Webstore on 10 August 2025, on CD and LP.