Midnight of the Century is the debut album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 of Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 band Blacklist

Blacklist (band)

Blacklist is a band from Brooklyn, New York composed of Josh Strawn , Ryan Rayhill , Glenn Maryansky , and James Minor . They are one of the flagship bands of painter Pieter Schoolwerth's Wierd Records imprint...

. It was released in 2009 on independent record label

Independent record label

An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...

 Wierd Records

Wierd Records

Wierd Records is an American independent record label, founded in New York City by Pieter Schoolwerth in 2006. "Wierd" is also the name for an associated weekly DJ night started at Southside Lounge in Brooklyn in 2003, but having been held at Home Sweet Home for the last three years...

. The title is a reference to a book by Victor Serge

Victor Serge

Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

.

Themes and References

The song "Shock in the Hotel Falcon" is inspired by George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...

. "Language of the Living Dead" references the work of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.. The album's liner notes open with the phrase Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Fiat justitia ruat caelum is a Latin legal phrase, meaning "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." The maxim signifies the belief that justice must be realized regardless of consequences. According to the 19th century abolitionist politician Charles Sumner, it does not come from any...

 and contain quotes from Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, Don Delillo

Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...

, Rumi, and Salman Rushdie.

In terms of how this functions with the music, Josh Strawn, the singer and lyricist for Blacklist has said:

...if you want to read my lyrics for the subtexts and hear us as a political band, you can certainly do that and you can practically get a reading list from our songs (Ibn Rushd, Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....

, George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, Victor Serge

Victor Serge

Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

, Arjun Appadurai

Arjun Appadurai

Arjun Appadurai is a contemporary social-cultural anthropologist focusing on modernity and globalization, based in New York.Appadurai was born in Mumbai , India and educated in India before coming to the United States. He graduated from St...

, Ramin Jahanbegloo

Ramin Jahanbegloo

Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher and academic who is currently based in Canada. He teaches at the University of Toronto as a professor of political science.-Biography:...

, Salman Rushdie, Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....

, just to give you the short list). But if you just like the music, that works too. You don't have to know who Akbar Ganji

Akbar Ganji

Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. He has been described as "Iran’s preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly...

 and Zakia Zaki

Zakia Zaki

Zakia Zaki was an Afghan female journalist. She was the director and owner of Afghan Radio Peace, which broadcast out of Jabal Saraj, Parwan province, north of the capital of Kabul, Afghanistan....

 are to appreciate 'When Worlds Collide' by us [...] it is form or melody that succeeds first--if the more thought out ideas and agendas work too, they are only able to do so because the rest is already in place and one's appreciation of one shouldn't condition too much your ability to appreciate the other.http://nimany.com/news/2008/01/nimany-post-punk-music-scene.html

Track listing

All tracks written by Blacklist.

1. "Still Changes" – 3:59
2. "Flight of the Demoiselles
   Flight of the Demoiselles
   "Flight of the Demoiselles" is a song by Blacklist, from their debut LP, Midnight of the Century. The song was digitally released as a single on February 14, 2009 and is the only song on the album to prominently feature the electric sitar...
   
   " – 4:19
3. "Shock in the Hotel Falcon" – 4:44
4. "Language of the Living Dead" – 4:33
5. "Odessa" – 4:39
6. "Julie Speaks" – 4:32
7. "Poison for Tomorrow" – 3:23
8. "Frontiers" – 4:11
9. "The Cunning of History" – 3:03
10. "When Worlds Collide" – 4:34
11. "The Believer" – 4:56