Flipping double birds, setting off fireworks, playing the drums with fists and still wearing a damned sock over his head Cleveland, Ohio-borne black/heavy metal wraith MIDNIGHT returns for a high energy, all fighting words braced sixth full-length album. ‘Hellish Expectations‘ is a quick burner of a record written fast and on-fire with pure and simple hip-cut reactivity on the brain. For some the tuneful side of their ancient black/speed metal inspired trip might be missing in action to some degree but for those of us looking for the live wire energy of the band condensed into a fast direct-to-arm shot this should prove a fast favorite among their thus far solid body of work.

At just ~26 minutes ‘Hellish Expectations‘ is by some margin one of the shortest full-lengths from Midnight to date and I believe it is for the sake of keeping it focused on what is intentionally different and new to their bigger picture introduced herein. That is to suggest that this is more of a metalpunk level of focus than we’ve heard from Athenar to date with most songs checking out just under the three minute mark and hitting a faster, more aggressive pace across the board. This is more-or-less in stark contrast to the mid-paced and tuneful Venom-cum-Motörheaded style found on their last three LPs but not at all so far from the style they’d kicked things off with back in 2003 with their first demo (‘Midnight‘, 2003), a side project from when Athenar was still in long-running heavy metal group Boulder. This all lines up well enough with the artists suggestion that the album was written over the course of one weekend and in direct reaction to hearing the pre-mix version of the previous LP, ‘Let There be Witchery‘ (2022), before it’d been finished. Also, we should keep in mind soon after he’d released the debut LP from Whitespade, an earlier Motörhead worship project. Was he on a roll? Unraveling?

Per my own taste he’d more-or-less been on a roll even if album number five from Midnight hadn’t been my favorite at that point and none of his work circa 2022 was all that out of character. If you’re familiar with the minutiae of what dude was doing for those first eight years between various singles, splits and EP releases the style of this new album won’t be all that surprising but of course progress made leading up to their debut (‘Satanik Royalty‘, 2011) eventually found the band’s popularity on the uptick after bands like Toxic Holocaust, Inepsy and eh, even Darkthrone‘s late 2000’s records set the popularity of black/speed metal up for success. For my own taste ‘Sweet Death and Ecstasy‘ (2017) was a high point for the band at the time in terms of iterating upon the style of their debut, leaning into songcraft more than on-fire speed with each release but it wasn’t until ‘Rebirth by Blasphemy‘ (2020) presented a well-rounded heavy metal record, probably the peak of that decade’s momentum from my point of view. So, whatever you’re expecting heading into ‘Hellish Expectations‘ may be subverted by a shouting-ass heavy metalpunk infused record barking through its quick and loud set.

Did I have shit in my ears for the last ten? I mean, the first time I put “Expect Total Hell” on I wasn’t sure if I’d been viewing Midnight from the wrong angle all these years as a Motörpunk and UK82 adjacent feeling gig without fully lingering in that realm, owing more to the Venom and Warfare spectrum overall, but there is more than a fair chunk of ‘Hellish Expectations‘ which steps in the crustier street punk edged side of British metalpunk herein. “Gash Scrape” is probably the sharpest example of this energy off the bat but hey, this initial observation isn’t all there is to explore here as we pass through the quick and clean sway of “Slave of the Blade” and dirging “Dungeon Lust” getting it from all angles without too much lingering on one thought.

As ‘Hellish Expectations‘ pushes on fast I’d begin to wonder if Athenar‘d recorded these pieces in this exact order since the vocals appear get more desperately hoarse and raw as we pass through, hitting a rabid-toothed bark with “Deliver Us to Devil” and especially (my favorite song on the album) “Mercyless Slaughtor” which reaches that fevered psychosis you’d expect from the best of Slaughter (Canada) and/or Nekrofilth, all of which adds to the feeling that this record was cut fast and loose in a garage level blur. From start to finish we get a consistent clip of all killer, all guns readied and wrathful aggression with few breaks in the dark clouds summoned. Whatever’d internally prompted the edgier, harder hit nature of this record did well to give it a mean pair of balls in the process and basically subvert any expectations I’d had when tucking in.

Midnight have done well to capture a bit of a lightning in a bottle feeling here at a point in their discography where most either resign to a point of comfortable identity or total combustion. If I -had- to have a go-to record from the band in the past it’d basically ended up being ‘Rebirth by Blasphemy‘ in the more recent past thanks to a well-rounded and kicking sum of their respective parts yet as I walked away from ‘Hellish Expectations‘ I’d found this to be the most potent concentrate one could glean from their overall body of work. No doubt it helps that the punkish throttle which threads itself through its action securing this as the new ‘go-to’ grab in the future. A high recommendation.

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