Steven Sater and James Bourne have made a concept album of their new musical “Murder At The Gates.” In advance of the album’s release on July 1, 2026, the creators are debuting a song, “Fuckin’ Scream” that features vocals from “Stranger Things” star Gaten Matarazzo.
Sater is the Tony, Grammy and Olivier Award-winning creator of “Spring Awakening.” He wrote the book and lyrics for “Murder at the Gates.” Bourne is a chart-topping, multi-Platinum musician who has a solo career and was co-founder of the bands Busted and Son of Dork. He will handle the music, production and songwriting for “Murder at the Gates.”
The show is more than a decade in the making, and is a black-comic murder mystery set in a Gen-Z, gated-community America. It’s a dark and stormy night and Cameron is having her birthday. To her horror, her dad is throwing her a party to help her get over the worst year ever — the sudden death of her mother and a gruesome break-up from her soul-mate, the poet-rebel Ethan. All of Cam’s supposed friends arrive in costume. It’s all going splendidly, until the party “murder” occurs. And somehow, it’s real. Someone’s dead. And the security system has locked down.
Sater says, “Back in the day, when I was first conceiving ‘Spring Awakening’, I was urged to update the story to contemporary times. As I suspected, that didn’t work. But that energy spilled into ‘Murder at the Gates,’ a black comic look at how totally effed life can be as a young person today.”
