The Abused (Independent)

What pushes a gentle soul to the brink of homicidal, teen-attacking insanity? While that sounds like a tag line for an ’80s slasher flick, this is the narrative backdrop for Black Clothes’ latest, The Abused. Conceived and written by AngelMaker member Colton Bennett, the instrumental album shifts between black-metal guitars and cinematic washes of synth.

While many modern synthscapers would follow in the footsteps of John Carpenter’s eerie minimalism, Black Clothes’ more keyboard-oriented pieces are both fanciful and melancholy. “Childhood”, for instance, almost sounds like Klaus Doldinger’s tear-inducing work from the NeverEnding Story scene where the horse drowns in the Swamp of Sadness.

The story behind the music is that a quiet high-school janitor goes on a killing spree after some teens murder his cat. He gouges out the eyes of his enemies, wearing some sort of dead-skin mask while doing so. Though penultimate number “Family” has him killed by a kid, the end of the story has the janitor’s body bag mysteriously vanishing from the morgue. Playfully working with horror tropes in sound and script like this, could Black Clothes’ The Abused: Part 2 already be on the way?