Satanic Royalty

While I can enjoy a good, innovative, boundary pushing album as much as the next guy, I can also enjoy an album that's a shameless throwback, and that's where Midnight thrives. It's a cornucopia of sex, blood, and rock n' roll that owes more than a little bit to Venom, Motorhead, and Tom G Warrior, but even for an album so heavily entrenched in the '80s, "Satanic Royalty" still manages to sound fresh and exciting today.

There's a good blend of speed metal and slower, more traditional metal on here, but my preference has to be for the faster songs. That's where Midnight auteur Athenar really shines, where he can just let rip and inject a heavy dosage of punk influence into the music. Just try not to chant along with the chorus of "You Can't Stop Steel," an apparent ode to the Pittsburgh Steelers that's heavily laden with wild lead guitars and some surprisingly melodic riffs. I also have to give special mention to "Lust, Filth, and Sleaze," which besides being a killer song, has some of the most outright explicit lyrics I've heard in a metal song. See, normally metal songs about sex are just flat out violent or bizarre, but this is just...hey, sometimes you want to sing about breast milk in a metal song, and if the music is good enough to back it up, who's gonna stop you? When the loose, sloppy guitar solo suddenly breaks into a dark, eerie harmony, it's a nice change of pace, and really cements the song's greatness.

I'll admit that the few slower songs on here, such as the "Savage Dominance" and "Necromania" aren't always the most well developed or interesting, but they've got some fun moments, and other midpaced tracks like "Black Damnation" are great. The production style is right on the money for this sort of album, a hint of rawness while also giving every instrument a chance to shine. Like many of the bands that Midnight draws from, the bass is massive and distorted, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Is Athenar a good singer? Not by any technical definition of the word "good" (or "singer," for that matter), but he sounds like a true madman, a great fit for the kind of music he makes.

So if you're a total die hard for the the days of the '80s, when metal was sloppy and drunken, and you don't mind a shameless throwback sound, "Satanic Royalty" should be right up your alley.