Hellish Expectations, the newest offering from Cleveland‘s favorite filth metal alchemists, MIDNIGHT, is out today on Metal Blade Records!
Dirty, hostile, and alluringly obnoxious, MIDNIGHT makes music to start fights to. One-man-army, Athenar, has been churning out an ungodly racket, dropping countless demos, splits, and EPs and ultimately slaying the metal/punk underground with his own addictive brand of lust, grime, and sleaze for over two decades. And in 2024 he‘s with the band‘s sixth full-length, the blackened heavy metal rumblings of Hellish Expectations.
“It‘s a knuckle-dragger with a fat cutoff,” notes Athenar, “Probably the most concise and straight to the point MIDNIGHT album to date, and all written in a weekend.”
“From start to finish, this album is a banger,” hails MetalSucks. “There are no songs to be skipped, and the sleaziness of the vocals and lyrics is, as always, a huge seller of the album as well. Even the video [“F.O.A.D.”] has parental controls on it, so that should give you an idea of the sleaze levels we‘re dealing with.” Last Rites concurs, “If you know MIDNIGHT, you know what this record sounds like, but Hellish Expectations pushes the lust, the filth, the sleaze, and the metal farther into the red. It’s angrier, more energetic, more direct… It‘s fun as hell, fast as hell, loud as hell, silly as hell, irreverent as hell, and all of those are the hellish expectations one should have when approaching it, and all the reasons you should love every second of it.” Rock Hard Germany writes, “MIDNIGHT remains unattainable and unmistakable – Athenar has proven this once again with this masterpiece, MIDNIGHT‘s best album since Satanic Royalty.” New Noise hails, “No love songs, no ballads, just speed, mayhem, and lots of volume. It‘s attitude-driven, walking that fine line between good, old-fashioned punk rock and a headbanging nod to classic Venom – Anything less and it wouldn‘t be MIDNIGHT…Hellish Expectations is Athenar going for broke and laying it all on the line for his fans, for better or worse, and the good news is, he nailed it.” Adds The Headbanging Moose, “…raise your horns nonstop in the name of sheer blasphemy to the sound of this precious gem of the underground.”
