Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats Announce 'Shapes of Midnight' Album

Psych-doom favorites Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats are returning with their seventh full-length album, Shapes of Midnight, and have shared its ominous title track as a first taste of the record.

The band, led by founder Kevin Starrs, will release Shapes of Midnight on September 18 via their own Killer Candy Records. The album is billed as a concept record drawing partly from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," a fitting literary anchor for a group long known for cinematic, unsettling themes. "Our albums exist in an alternate universe to our own," Starrs explained. "They're all stories that could happen here, but everything's just a bit 'off.'"

Musically, Shapes of Midnight marks a return to the guitar-driven attack that defined the band's earlier work, following their more synth-heavy 2024 project Nell' Ora Blu. Coverage of the announcement describes a sound that blends melancholic pop melody, the gallop of new-wave-of-British-heavy-metal riffing, jazz-influenced arrangements and Krautrock synthesizer textures — all layered over the eerie harmonies and dense, downbeat heaviness the group has cultivated since its breakout 2011 album Blood Lust.

Adding to the record's pedigree, the band tracked it live to analog tape at the legendary Abbey Road Studios over a three-day session with engineer Chris Bolster, using vintage equipment — including microphones historically associated with The Beatles and Pink Floyd — an intriguing backdrop for a band whose aesthetic leans toward the sinister and the psychedelic.

The title track, released alongside the announcement, offers fans a preview of the album's mood: dark, melodic and steeped in the retro-horror atmosphere that has made Uncle Acid a cult favorite in the heavy underground. For a band that has built its reputation on immersive, story-driven records, the Poe-inspired framing suggests Shapes of Midnight will continue that tradition.

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats have spent more than a decade carving out a distinctive niche — heavy but hook-laden, vintage but singular — and the new album positions them to extend that run. With the title track already circulating and the concept and recording pedigree generating buzz, anticipation is building among the band's devoted following.