Midnight

Midnight operates as a black metal band from Ohio under the direction of Jamie Walters, who performs as Athenar and previously anchored Boulder within Cleveland’s metal and punk communities. The group secured underground recognition in 2003 through its intense Funeral Bell EP. Blending punk, thrash, speed, and death metal into an unyielding sound and outlook, Midnight gradually entered the broader extreme metal arena during the 2010s and secured a contract with Metal Blade before issuing Rebirth by Blasphemy in 2020. Two years afterward came Let There Be Witchery, the band’s next release on that imprint.

Walters launched the project as an offshoot of Boulder and introduced it via the 2003 Funeral Bell EP. Over the following eight years he issued limited singles, splits, and other independent items before unveiling the debut album Satanic Royalty in 2011. That record lifted Midnight past niche status, attracting wider attention and paving the way for the 2014 follow-up No Mercy for Mayhem. During the interim Walters kept releasing fresh and previously unreleased material in assorted formats, among them a 2015 split 7" with Shitfucker and the 2016 EP Shox of Violence, while characterizing his approach as “lust, filth, and sleaze.” Sweet Death & Ecstasy, the third full-length, surfaced in 2017. The band then joined Metal Blade in 2019, with Rebirth by Blasphemy marking its first album for the label the next year. Let There Be Witchery arrived in early 2022. Written across one weekend, 2024’s Hellish Expectations presented Walters’s tightly focused collection of tracks driven by raw rage and testosterone.