Midnight: Complete and Total Hell (Compilation 2012)

Drunken Debauchery Metal

Guest review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

Midnight is a band that I have been wanting to check out for quite a long time, but for some reason I never really got around to it. Midnight is pretty much the prototypical Hell's Headbangers band, besides the mighty Nunslaughter of course. They pay tribute to a lot of the early black metal bands while remaining firmly rooted in the NWOBHM and speed metal.


Midnight basically sounds like a combination of Motörhead and Venom. It is fast and intense, with very short songs, but with raspy vocals and distorted riffing. It is never a pretty sound, but that's to be expected from this record label. Midnight is unabashedly retro, but they sound like they are absolutely having a blast doing it. They are fast and intense, with NWOBHM-inspired riffs and a Lemmy Kilmister-esque vocal style. This is beer-drinking, party music, if the party was to spin out of control and end up with people smashing beer bottles over people's heads and turning into a giant drunken brawl.

This is a compilation of the band's material released prior to their Satanic Royalty debut full-length. Most of this material was hard to find and long out of print. There are 21 tracks here, but they fly by really fast, with only a handful breaking the four minute mark.

As a compilation of demos and splits, the production is a little uneven. Some of the songs sound better than others, but that is all par for the course for this type of release. This compilation offers a look at Midnight's material prior to their full-length.

This is filthy and dirty metal in the vein of Motörhead and Venom. I love it.

The Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars



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