Review Summary: I would say that this is better than MCID but that is not saying a lot, as is clearly shown by this album.
Highly Suspect started off their career with a bang, and since then, each passing album has felt more and more diluted in sound, and
MCID caused them to reach a new low that would be hard to recover from. The follow up,
The Midnight Demon Club, is thankfully a slight improvement. However, the key word in that sentence is ‘slight,’ as it still lacks what made
Mister Asylum such a fantastic album.
While Highly Suspect were never known for their lyric writing, they do manage to surprise me with how bad they can be with each release. Not only are they childish, overly reliant on swear words, and just generally cringeworthy, but they also have no deeper meaning, which is not necessarily a problem, but the lyrics are quite desperate in trying to be meaningful and they completely fail at it. The worst example of this is with
Cool Kids where the lyrics are discussing about how social media ruins our perception of ourselves by adding more and more insecurities to us due to the ‘cool kids’ always seeming perfect, but they do this in the least discreet way that is possible on this planet. With the main chorus hook "But *** the cool kids, you can never measure up to the cool kids" and "Literally nobody looks like a ***ing filter" from the spoken word section, the song just ends up being painful to listen to, which just takes away from the message that they are trying to say. Another example of poor lyrics is the ballad,
Evangeline, which concludes the album and leaves us with the climactic line "*** everyone forever, *** everything forever and ever."
Again, Highly Suspect were never ones for poetic lyric writing, but they managed to cover that up on
Mister Asylum due to the surplus of energetic stoner rock riffs. However, these ‘energetic stoner rock riffs’ are practically nowhere to be found on the album. The riffs are instead replaced with flat sounding synths and lacklustre beats. If the guitar was more prominent on the album, it would vastly improve it, as it would add so much more to songs like
Natural Born Killer than just the solid vocal hooks. On the bands' take on the riff-focused genre of metal with
Pink Lullabye, they meet a bit of a predicament as the guitar has to be a major part of the track, which it kind of is, but because of the pop production, the riffs sound thin and lifeless. Additionally, whenever the synths enter the track, the riff just becomes buried within the mix, making it even weaker. The only thing keeping this track from being a complete failed experiment is the solid screams within the chorus, which at least add some intensity to the track.
As I have previously said,
The Midnight Demon Club is a definite step up from their former effort, as there are moments, albeit brief moments, where the band sounds more inspired. A decent solo gives the final chorus of the otherwise lethargic
Need To Say a bit more power, despite the fact that it sounds almost too similar to the hook from the opener,
The Sound. Johnny Stevens has the ability in making some anthemic or catchy choruses as shown by
Love Like This and
New California. The title track,
The Midnight Demon Club, culminates into a satisfying guitar solo that feels reminiscent to their works off
Mister Asylum, however, the solo is then abruptly cut with an uninspired electronic beat which entirely destroys the momentum the solo was carrying.
Overall,
The Midnight Demon Club is another weak album from Highly Suspect. While it is more consistent and coherent than
MCID with it’s occasional decent moments, it still fails to reach the heights of their debut. The lyrics range from weak to straight up embarrassing, and the guitar feels like an afterthought. The band is now fully dependant on Johnny Stevens' vocal performance, and while they can be powerful, they are not powerful enough to stand alone away from the strong riffs and choruses, especially when most of the vocal lines here feel uninspiring.
