2007 Album Review: Midnight Juggernauts ‘Dystopia’

August 23rd 2013

On August 29, FBi hits double digits. To celebrate, the Flog is taking a trip down memory lane: we’re counting down 10 years of albums in 10 days. Daniel Prior takes us to 2007…

dystopia

I came into 2007 much in the same way E.T. came to earth: screaming, confused, and a overwhelmed by the sense that I simply didn’t fit in.

High School never really prepared me for the whole Inner-West hipster scene that I found myself in when I first moved out of the dust-bowl of Winston Hills with my oldest brother.

To go from spending the majority of my days and nights indoors playing video games and reading graphic novels with my fellow acne-covered nerds into the bar-littered, live music utopia of Glebe was a big shock to the system, though a welcome one to be sure.

I saw it as an opportunity to change my persona; from pale and skinny sci-fi geek to pale and skinny cool guy.

I could do this. It was happening.

But behind the second hand clothes and baby beginnings of what would become (and still is) an excellent beard, I always felt like I was a pretender. I never really belonged.

No matter how many parties I went to or how many vests I owned, I never truly thought that the dice wielding, game loving, Tolkien reading, alien zapping, star gazing, introverted and shy person that I am deep down could ever be accepted in Sydney.

Two things served to changed this.

The first was my introduction to FBi. It was the first time I had ever met a group of individuals at such different ends of the social spectrums who were all brought together by their love of music, art, culture, and above all, Sydney.

Their passion was infectious, and it wasn’t long before music beat out games, comics and every other thing that I’ve loved for many years as my strongest passion and love.

It was around this time, when I was falling love for the very first time with the entire concept of music, that my brother gifted to me an album that changed my entire perspective.

I had first heard the Midnight Juggernauts’ very dancy single ‘45 & Rising’ some months beforehand and had already dismissed them as a more energetic version of Daft Punk.

Still, when I held the album in my hands and stared at the cover, I felt that there was something more.

 

The northern lights flare over a starry night sky, frost covered pines stand guard beneath, and front and centre read the words:

DYSTOPIA

MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS

Their music is like some message from a forgotten world beyond the moon. The sound made me feel like I had drifted over a waterfall and instead of plummeting to a watery grave, I instead continued to sail out; over the horizon, through the Milky Way… Into The Galaxy.

Before I let my headphones drop to the floor I was in love.

Each and every song I listened to filled me with visions of worlds and characters from unseen sci-fi universes. I was so inspired by the music, that I immediately set pen to paper and began writing down ideas for sci-fi stories, pages which I still keep to this day.

Dystopia is the reason I became a writer. It distilled in me a love of the new and unexplored territories of fiction and the imagination and gave me a drive to create visions with the same power and beauty for my readers as their songs stir in me; even now, five years after I first heard the album, listening back to it in its entirety only fuels my mind with inspiration for new stories.

The truth is, this album means so much to me that I haven’t even attempted to write a fair and balanced review because to me, they aren’t just a band and this isn’t just an album.

It’s a message. One which has defined me in so many ways, and continually illuminates my path:

Laugh as we run from the world we once knew

Songs we once sung, they will come back to you

Wait for the sun as it comes into view

Path to discovery

Road to recovery

2007 Albums of the Week

———–

2006 Album Review :: Department Of Eagles ‘The Cold Nose’

2005 Album Review :: Hermitude ‘Tales Of The Drift’

2004 Album Review :: Sarah Blasko ‘The Overture and the Underscore’

2003 Album Review :: The Presets ‘Blow Up’

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