It’s nineteen-seventy-eighty-something and the rock coming out’s rhyming closely with ‘shock’. There’s gratuitous guitars, glam and denim galore, and the wielding and shredding of hell-bound bent notes punctuate every break, every song. It’s as phallic and sex-worn as Beelzebub’s hoof-stick, it’s soaked in a riff heavy glaze. Drag that sound with its glitter and leather and guts right on into the 21st century, and we have something like Midnight Devils.
OK it’s not new, this reviews their debut that came out in 2018, but just as then this is still Something Bigger. Big on punch, big on ‘tude, big on dirt. And the raucous and self-aware iconoclastic shtick is as lean as it’s steeped in tradition.
Song-along woah-oahs, check. Bass drum hair-metal thumps, check. Songs about girls, motor oil, stayin’ alive, and baptism by fire of the music… check. This is as much incarnation as re-animation of bandana-clad hard rock of past. And it’s just as mescaline ego’d as always. In short, it’s a thrill to take in.
So why now is this getting the air time? Well the band are on tour across the US and this is the first time I’ve heard them. I might wish I’d heard them before. They’ve just released a new video for the sleaze-clad ‘Pink Halo‘ and it’s a bombast of late 80s schlock. Cocaine, studded belts, guitars swung like sawn-offs from Terminator 2, make up and shake up and ripped cut-sleeve shirts, it’s a diet that still feeds and fills.
Out of place? No such thing. Out if time, aw damn right. But that’s what make makes this so special. It’s a kick, it’s a blast, it’s an album that fuels, it’s adrenaline for amped up hell raisers. And oh man do I miss the US.
Rats on the Run 