{"id":10462,"date":"2020-01-23T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=10462"},"modified":"2020-01-23T14:00:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T14:00:47","slug":"midnight-rebirth-by-blasphemy-metal-blade-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=10462","title":{"rendered":"Midnight \u2013 \u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 (Metal Blade Records)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If the likes of \u2018Hell Awaits\u2019, \u2018Restless And Wild\u2019, \u2018Black Metal\u2019 and \u2018Screaming For Vengeance\u2019 got you bouncing around the room with excitement the first time you heard them then \u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 the Metal Blade debut album from Midnight is the \u201cmust hear\u201d album of 2020 for you.<\/p>\n

Long term Midnight fans will no doubt already be tutting at my reference to \u2018Black Metal\u2019 but across their impressive 17 year back catalogue there is no way of distancing the band\u2019s sound from that primal guttural roar of Cronos and Co. They are the band I once dubbed as \u201cbeing able to play Venom\u2019s back catalogue better than Venom\u201d, and I\u2019m going to stick by that.<\/p>\n

\u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 then is Midnight possibly taking their first steps into \u201cdoing a Ghost\u201d by moving away from the metal underground and into the more mainstream. Fear not though, as the title of opener \u2018Fucking Speed And Darkness\u2019 alludes Midnight main man Athenar isn\u2019t about to be prancing about like the Pied Piper in its accompanying video any time soon. Nah, this is still very much \u201cgo for the throat\u201d heavy metal music, it\u2019s just this time around it really feels like Athenar has stepped up his game in the songwriting department and here all 10 tracks hit home with equal parts ferocity and finesse.<\/p>\n

If I were to single out one thing that \u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 has throughout its 33 minute running time it is that there is a clear focus to deliver brutal yet memorable songs, and therein lies the secret of why for me Midnight stands head and shoulders above the rest of the black metal pack. There\u2019s still some tongue in cheek stuff going on (Devil\u2019s Excrement\u2019 for example \u2013 which could very easily be a Trigger McPoopshute song) but essentially this is heads down no-nonsense heavy metal celebrating everything that is great about the genre in 2020. The likes of \u2018Cursed Possessions\u2019, \u2018Escape From The Grave\u2019 and \u2018The Sounds Of Hell\u2019 would and should be instant dancefloor fillers at any metal all-nighter \u2013 if such things still exist?<\/p>\n

Granted \u2018Rising Scum\u2019 might sail a little close to Venom\u2019s \u2018Nightmare\u2019 in terms of being the obvious track to be pulled as a potential single, but this comparison is not being made because of plagiarism, it’s being made simply because it\u2019s also a song driven by a drumbeat set to raise the dead. Likewise, the opening few bars of album closer \u2018You Drag Me Through Fire\u2019 are primetime Priest yet the song soon catapults the listener back into the very depths of hell with just enough time left to polish your studded gauntlets before pressing the \u201cRepeat\u201d button on your death deck.<\/p>\n

At the top of this review I mentioned a quartet of heavy metal records that loom large over the metal community to this day, \u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 has all the potential to be such an album for the generations to follow, you just need to decide if you want to buy the inverted cross CD or the limited coloured vinyl.<\/p>\n

\u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 is released Tomorrow\u00a0get the date in your Necronomicon.<\/p>\n

Buy ‘Rebirth By Blasphemy’ Here<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: Johnny Hayward<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the likes of \u2018Hell Awaits\u2019, \u2018Restless And Wild\u2019, \u2018Black Metal\u2019 and \u2018Screaming For Vengeance\u2019 got you bouncing around the room with excitement the first time you heard them then \u2018Rebirth By Blasphemy\u2019 the Metal Blade debut album from Midnight is the \u201cmust hear\u201d album of 2020 for you. Long term Midnight fans will no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[2204,4355,4354,4356,3642,1614],"class_list":["post-10462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-black-metal","tag-metal-blade","tag-midnight","tag-rebirth-by-blasphemy","tag-slayer","tag-venom","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10509,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10462\/revisions\/10509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}