On their debut cold, granite slab for Fright, the newly appointed home for serial killer synth symphonies, Gatekeeper tear open a vortex in the brick walls of our imagination and unleash a world where dancing is no fun unless you find yourself in an impenetrably dark room desolately trying to body pop in a strange trance, unwittingly slipping and sliding in in a pool of freshly spilt blood, jerking in backwards slow motion movements as you two step with the sound of someone else's wheezy breathing and the quick terrifying sonic sting of a serrated blade striking just inches from your ear. As Chicago's masters of the macabre, Gatekeeper are truly awe inspiring conjurors of the kind of crimson splattered disco that terrified the babies of the 80s, toiling away in the basement of Smith's Grove - Warren County Sanitarium to create sinister synth cathedral epics that perfectly evoke a spine shuddering time when we were haunted by those mysterious plastic boxes so ornately displayed in VHS rental stores that provided portals into a garish, gross, darkly glamorous celluloid world where hotel hallways were eternally aglow in green ectoplasmic matter, masked men were glimpsed briefly from bedroom windows in suburban gardens before vanishing into thin air, where seemingly innocent toys harboured horrific secrets inside their plastic prisons, and blackened alleyways were home to invisible, parallel universe bazaars run by mysterious men with pointed teeth and intense blue eyes obscured by their pyramid bamboo hats, selling a dizzying array of golden Mattel weaponry and three headed creatures in wicker cages. Towering above this deserted synthetic landscape of icy electroid charges and industrial black clatter is our God and hero, John Carpenter, his phantasmagorical visions and teachings of psychotic homecomings and monochromatic cityscapes choked by magic and menace translated by Gatekeeper into something possessed of undeniable religious power and sacrificial intensity as they expertly guide us through the twisting brain-tunnels of his world. On "Optimus Maximus" we're guided through the ruby red disco ball hysterics of "Forgotten" and "Obsidian" hi-NRG anthems in Hades where raven haired beauties in grey boiler suits and impossibly high Chanel heels, their black lipstick smudged so elegantly across their lips, wave around razorsharp silver fans in the air unrepentant of the odd dancefloor decapitation their lithe movements may incur, while moustached men in black leather caps and denim short shorts shunt in the labyrinthine backrooms to create a writhing sexual monstrosity of flesh and bone, through to "Visions" and it's re-imagining of Giorgio Moroder as a leather clad man on a mission emerging from memetic polyalloy mists ready to slay body shifting Antarctic aliens and ENCOM warlocks with his arsenal of Moog machinery, and onto the thunderous Yuzna industrial theatrics of the title track which with it's skull crushing power drum body blows and pulsating "don't look behind you" electro bassline provides approximately 4 minutes of the finest final chase sequence orchestrations outside of a movie starring Kurt Russell.