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Looking over the Decibel Magazine Tour lineup for this year, which is always a guaranteed draw for me, I noticed Ohio blackened speed metal project Midnight is coming along this year to support the headliners. With a tour in the offing and an extended version of their Shox of Violence EP coming out this February, this is a good time to look back at their 2014 full-length, No Mercy For Mayhem. Taking equally from Discharge, Motörhead, and Venom, it's dirty, ugly, and full of energy. The crusty power of straightforward d-beat headbangers like Evil Like a Knife and The Final Rape of Night underscore the pure sleaze of the best Midnight tunes, and the power's matched by simple, well-made rock melodies. But interspersed are more mid-tempo tracks, still bristling with hooks and with a wailing, bent-stringed lead sitting on top of main man Athenar's throat-shredding vocals, like Prowling Leather. Strangely, the title track, which I expected to be the harshest and fastest one, gets a slower and more relaxed tune, a rock anthem complete with group chorus, but with the same Satanic lyrics that all the other songs get. It's a little weird and feels too slow in comparison to the other tracks, which go better with the general vibe of the album. When the thrashing is raw and unpretentious, Midnight does best, such as on Try Suicide, whose lyrics, I'm sure, would have left the album on the censorship lists of a number of concerned parents' groups if it had been released in the 80s. The speed of the album isn't actually all that fast when compared to most thrash or punk acts -- its real strength is in the dirty, unabashed enthusiasm it projects. No Mercy For Mayhem has a few flaws, with a title track that somewhat detracts from the performance, but it's still a lot of fun to listen to. Bandcamp: https://midnight-ohio.bandcamp.com/album/no-mercy-for-mayhem. |
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Killing Songs : Prowling Leather, Try Suicide |
Andy quoted 81 / 100 | ||||||||||
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