I like Midnight. It’s not a fact I hide and frankly, I’d put “Satanic Royalty” up there as one of the finest black/speed metal records made in the last years. Every show I’ve seen from these American maniacs (as in, Athenar and Co) has been a sweaty, chaotic triumph. Midnight have had a track record of maintaining high intensity music, the kind that keeps slapping the listener again and again.

Hailing out of Cleveland, it’s not a coincidence that the band (or one-man-project-while-in-studio, if you want to call it that) chooses to release an album that most of it deals with the local rock, punk, blues and metal scene(s) over there in Ohio, while some of these names of bands and artists were a tad less known, especially if one lives on the other side of the pond.

It begins with an actual Midnight creation, “Cleveland Metal” and it kicks the door wide open with the natural straight forward fashion we all came to cherish over the years. Catchy on one hand, yet really scruffy on the other. If Manowar can sing about them being true, Midnight can definitely sing about how elite Cleveland’s music scene is, whereas the west side, and I quote, is trash. Can one get any more American than this? Probably, if a bald eagle would be thrown in the mixture somehow, but this comes pretty close. Going over each and every cover song feels a bit weird, so I’ll just name a few to get the feeling of the album going.

First up is “Iron Beast” from Kratos, a band that put out an EP by the same name in 1986 in a much more classic style than how the current Clevelander made it. If Kratos did it the old-school sounding traditional way, then Midnight takes it up a notch and turns it into a spiked version that could easily been placed in any of the bands’ own albums.

An amazing change of versions and one of the pearls in this album is “Frenzy”, originally by one of the pioneers of shock factors on stage, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It’s cool to see that Athenar managed to take this Blues/Rhythm piece and turn it into fast paced angry Speed/Thrash with skin cutting guitar solos and a drumming that keeps that same structure alive, while musically being pretty far from the original piece.

Same goes for Rubber City Rebels’ “Child Eaters”, where the old punk version has been tuned down a notch and transformed into a weird, aggressive, well-versed heavy piece of disgustingly cool punkish Midnight hymn that is just ten times more angry than the original, including the short speech for mommy who forgot her pill.
Punk veterans Electric Eels are also around here, with their “Black Leather Rock” that wins a total metallic makeover. Hard hitting drum work and fast paced riffs, topped with throaty infamous vocals, thus practically creating almost a whole new song out of the old.

Midnight’s latest album might not satisfy those hoping for all-new material to push the band forward, but on the flip side, it’s a filthy homage to the Ohio names that helped shape their sound. It may not be original writing — but it sure as hell slaps like it is!

Rating: 8/10

Record label: Metal Blade Records
Release date: May 23rd 2025

Written by: Omer

Tracklist:

1. Cleveland Metal
2. Iron Beast
3. I’m Insane
4. Final Solution
5. Frenzy
6. Child Eaters
7. 3^rd Generation Nation
8. Rock ‘n Roll Fever
9. Carrions Keep
10. Black Leather Rock
11. Steel, Rust and Disgust
12. Agitated