Just over ten days ago, Ljubljana was hot not only because of the summer weather, but also because, under the wing of Dirty Skunks, the hellish duo of Night Demon and Midnight came thundering into town. Despite their genre differences, the two are bound together by their worship of horror, evil, demons, and all things that go bump in the night. If Night Demon would fit right at home on the soundtrack of some classic ’80s slasher, Midnight would be more at ease splattered across one of Cronenberg’s body horror messes. Orto Bar was packed this time with a crowd hungry for filth and depravity, and for the first time in my memory, a Dirty Skunks show ran a little late — Jarvis, Night Demon’s vocalist, sprinted onstage a fashionably academic 15 minutes behind schedule.
The Californian heavy metal trio greeted Ljubljana with a scream into the night — namely the opening crusher from their debut Curse of the Damned, Screams in the Night. The venue had already filled up nicely by then, and Night Demon showed the crowd no mercy, tearing through one heavy metal banger after another, only really slowing down for the closing epic Darkness Remains. These Americans are deeply rooted in classic NWOBHM, but it never sounds worn out — it sounds modern and fresh, and the guys had no trouble keeping the crowd locked in their grip for a good forty minutes. Their melodic hooks, powerful choruses, dynamic guitar work, and clanging rhythm section have that rare quality of burrowing straight into your ears and staying there. Thanks to the late start, vocalist Jarvis Leatherby didn’t do much talking — he let the music speak instead. They served up hard-hitting classics like Hallowed Ground, Flight of the Manticore, and Heavy Metal Heat to the fired-up crowd — which, refreshingly, included some foreign-speaking visitors for once — weaving in the singles Empires Fall, Kill the Pain, and Vysteria, all released between 2020 and 2022 and freshly collected on the just-released compilation Year of the Demon. The set wouldn’t have been complete without the hit Dawn Rider — complete with the intro lifted from the Motörhead classic Overkill — and, naturally, without the band’s mascot: a hooded figure of Death who waves a chalice over the crowd during the ominous The Chalice. After the main set closed out with the aforementioned Darkness Remains, Night Demon dropped their own “Iron Maiden” moment — meaning Night Demon itself, of course. Short but sweet, the only thing I missed was the anthemic Welcome to the Night.
Midnight’s mastermind Athenar started the band as a solo project, with the plan of releasing only EPs and splits — live shows weren’t part of the picture. Thankfully, Athenar changed his mind (much like Anaal Nathrakh, for instance), and Midnight have now spent a decade ravaging stages with their message of blasphemy and F.O.A.D. attitude. Within the very first seconds of their set, the smell of sulfur hung in the air at Orto — Midnight threw open the gates of hell and, for what I believe was the very first time in Slovenia, brought their Evil through them, armed this time with the brand-new masterpiece mess that is Let There Be Witchery. Midnight don’t complicate things, and that’s not even remotely their intention. From their very first satanic notes on Vomit Queens onward, they penetrated the crowd with ecstasy and diabolical discharge in the form of short, three-to-four-minute black/speed metal blasts. Sometimes it’s not about length but technique — though, hand on heart, Midnight have neither, hehe. Even the deaf could tell that they worship at the altar of Motörhead and Venom, something they don’t hide but also don’t sound like a carbon copy of. They’ve simply claimed those giants as their own and wrapped them in a shroud of black metal mania — and you’d be hard-pressed to find a band that sounds more authentic and self-defined. On stage, the Americans were like live firecrackers, and the pit below was just as chaotic, with the mosh showing no signs of stopping as Midnight openly egged on the constant stream of stage dives. Hats off to Athenar and his bastards for not burning alive behind their black masks in the hellish heat of Orto! Even though Midnight’s tracks are relatively similar to each other, it never got boring for a single second — heads were bobbing like bobblehead dolls from start to bitter end, from the sexy Penetratral Ecstasy and Lust Filth and Sleaze, through the slightly more melodic and epic Rebirth in Blasphemy, the slower rhythms of Satanic Royalty and the groovy swagger of Prowling Leather, all the way to pure black/speed chaos with Fucking Speed and Darkness, Poison Trash, and the fresh anthem Szex Witchery, which gets under your skin faster than the Body Snatchers — or better yet, the worms in James Gunn’s Slither. Mmmmm. There’s only one way to end these words: Ugh!
Photos: Nina Grad
