Worship Metal Album Of The Week – Midnight – Rebirth By Blasphemy
Midnight violators!
Love em or hate em, Midnight sure know how to make an entrance and “Fucking Speed and Darkness” is no exception! If Midnight has been one of your underground favorites over the past fifteen years, you know the drill. It’s Midnight and they’re operating at one hundred and thirty percent infernal power capacity. While the opening track on Rebirth By Blasphemy may sound a bit streamlined to longtime listeners, the tradeoff is that it smashes down the doors of unsuspecting noobs looking for an extra kick, but we’ll return to that in a moment.
To be honest, there’s very little that longtime listeners will have to grumble about with Rebirth By Blasphemy. In spite of the aforementioned streamlining, Rebirth By Blasphemy as a whole is a very in your face album. Which is to be expected from a band like Midnight, but speeding through the rapid fire succession of the title track, “Escape the Grave” and Devil’s Excrement”, there’s definitely the sense that only the best work would be accepted for this latest offering of unadulterated fury and hell fire.
As far as the remainder of the album is concerned, “Rising Scum” wins the the sleeper award on Rebirth By Blasphemy. While the track ultimately becomes one of the more evil sounding songs on the album, the first fifteen seconds is the blackened cover of Judas Priest’s “Take On the World” that we never asked for but always needed. Continuing deeper, there really isn’t a bad song track on Rebirth By Blasphemy. “Cursed Possessions” stands out as being the most “vintage” sounding song on the album and “Raw Attack’s” opening will get the feet of the punks moving. Album closer “You Can Drag Me Through the Fire” is a nice touch, giving listeners an honest summation of the triumphs and tribulations that Midnight had to endure to get to this point. It’s almost as if Midnight ringleader Athenar is yanking noobs by their collar and screaming “this is what I do” before screaming about fire as though he’s become possessed.
Getting back to the noobs, it’s no secret that Midnight signed with Metal Blade Records. As such, Midnight has access to Metal Blade quality capabilities, including distribution. Don’t call it a mainstream Midnight album, but Rebirth By Blasphemy is definitely an album that’s going to come across the radar of younger metalheads looking to see what the underground has to offer in ways their previous albums hadn’t.
All in all, there’s two ways to look at Rebirth By Blasphemy: if you’re a returning fan, you’ll get a high quality Midnight album. If you’re a noob that got the piss knocked out of you spinning Rebirth By Blasphemy and want more, welcome to the underground motherfuckers!!!! 9/10
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