It’s weird when you start liking heavy metal as a kid. In the late 80s, I was listening to Tommy Vance on the Friday rock show little did I know almost 40 years later it would still form such a big part of my life.
But the thing about metal is this: everyone thinks they know what it sounds like. Your mates all have an opinion, whether they have patches on their jacket or not.
It’s like Rob Zombie said once. When it comes to metal no one knows how big it is. I was in HMV the other day and there was as many Slipknot T-shirts as there was K pop ones. Moreover, we don’t care whether you like it or not.
And metal, generally, is fairly nuanced. Until that is, Midnight gets involved. Usually, you’d say they are nasty, putrid even except this is not they. This summoning down of Satan from wherever he is all the work of a one-man-band, Athenar.
Like some weird alchemist (I like to think of him as the mad scientist in the Back to Future films) he’s been in Cleveland churning out this ungodly racket, dropping countless demos, splits and EPs, and in 2024 he returns with Midnight’s sixth full-length, “Hellish Expectations.”
And if you know midnight then let’s be honest you know what to expect from the get go. “Expect Total Hell” is an absolute maelstrom of aggression. Nothing more and nothing less.
There is beauty in the brutality of “Gash Scrape”, the solos slash, and if “Masked And Deadly” rather repeats the dose then it’s supposed to!
Indeed, you could say the same about “Slave Of The Blade” if you wanted, but here’s the thing. They’re all brilliant.
He slows things down (slightly) on “Dungeon Lust”, but only so “Nuclear Savior” which begins side two in old money sounds even nastier, while “Deliver Us From Evil” sounds like it wants to do the absolute opposite.
And by this stage in the journey it’s unlikely that you need me to tell you what “Merciless Slaughtor” sounds like. Indeed, it is simply a nightmarish glimpse into the abyss.
The scream in “Doom Death Desire” is chilling, but when all is said and done, there’s the fact that this is wonderfully done.
So all the chin-stroking “tastemakers” (usually indie wankers who pretend to like The Smiths), can tell us what we’re supposed to like, we’ve got this. OK it’s a one-trick pony in a way, but does that really matter? Who makes metal like this anymore? The answer is Athenar, and in a world where everything is sanitised an anodyne. Meet the total opposite.
To be fair, you can’t even say it’s metal like they used to make, because really apart from early Venom maybe, who is sanded this raw and up for a fight. You’re probably glad every album doesn’t sound like this one but my God when one does it is an absolute gem. It’s nasty, but if the world is ending, this is playing come the rapture. Two minutes to Midnight? Well, the doomsday clock is ticking after all.
Rating 9/10
