Midnight Priest - Interview 12/28/2011

So Pita, we last spoke about a year and a half ago when you did the interview for the first issue of Contaminated Tones Magazine. What has been going on with Midnight Priest since then, have there been any member changes? I know you have a new record coming out. Who will be releasing the record? What will it sound like? When will it be available?

Hey Jon! Yes, it’s been quite a while and a lot of stuff has been going on. The album is out now and going fast! There’s a CD release on Stormspell Records and a vinyl release on A Forja (Label links at end). We’re very proud with the end result, it sounds fucking great and powerful and that’s what we wanted from the start – maddening Old School Metal Mayhem!

There’s been a line up change also, since Nasty Nightmare recorded the album and took off, so we have a new guitar player Johnny Kilmister, who is without any doubt the ultimate axe man for MIDNIGHT PRIEST. He’s mad, loud and nasty just like we all are, so we’re doing quite alright!

You said the album would be out in 2010 but I guess that got delayed. What happened that delayed the album for a full year?

That’s true, it took us almost a year to get the album out, and the main reason’s because we don’t have any management or whatsoever and must take care of every little detail by ourselves before the stuff goes to the pressing plant. We definitely want to have some control over our releases, from the cover artwork to the final mix. We’re lucky enough to have our good friend Zé Metálica - headbanger and graphic artist since the early days, to produce the exactly kind of art we wanted for the record and that took a while. Apart from this, we were waiting for the masters to arrive and had to make a couple of tweaks to the sound, since we wanted a very specific kind of production with a lot of detail and weren’t backing down on anything.

Fortunately the album has been out and doing very well, so go bang your head!!

Are there any songs on this debut full length that we have heard before from either the EP or 2009 cassette demo or will this album contain completely new songs? How would you compare these songs to the previous releases?

The album has a song ‘No Calor do Inferno’ (In The Heat of Hell) which dates back to the demo; we really wanted to make that song justice. ‘The Priest is Back’ demo was a shot in the dark when it came to production and the quality of the release compromised a lot. The label didn’t have much care for the dubbing quality and it came out pretty shitty I must say. Nevertheless it sold out very fast, but I’m still very pissed off with the end result. Nevertheless, power to the label, they put out very good underground bands.

There are only new songs on the album, apart from the above mentioned one, and they are of course MIDNIGHT PRIEST songs, with the same obscure atmosphere and nasty finesse the band always stood by. The production is great and it’s totally analogical, no modern equipment was used and that was our main goal production wise, no modern amps, gear or instruments, if anything further from1989 entered that studio, it got thrown in the fire no questions asked!

Compared to our previous releases, what really stands out is the technical abyss in musicianship. We actually had to learn how to play our instruments or else no album would ever be recorded, and that shows every second of the record; we grind our balls and it was worth every second of it. You take the heat and move on.

You have a track uploaded for people to check out called Sabado Negro. What is this track about? Tell me about why you chose this track to be the public's first glimpse at the album.

Actually it was the Iordan from Stormspell Records who chose that track for the preview. It was a challenge to put that song opening the album since it is almost 7 minutes long, not a lot of Heavy Metal albums start with such a long track, but it brings up that dark atmosphere which gets you into the record. It’s a prologue to insanity and it works pretty well.

The song ‘Sábado Negro’ means ‘Black Saturday’ and is inspired on Mario Bava’s work with Barbara Steel on Black Sunday, which is one of the finest movies ever made. In fact a lot of our songs are based upon horror movies and vintage Portuguese horror tales. There are also some lines on the lyrics taken from the ‘Portuguese Black Book of Magic’ which is an ancient manuscript used for spiritual séances and obscure burial rituals that take place since the XII century, there are a lot of burial sites and graveyards marked with inscriptions on tombs and they’re made to ward off people from those grounds which are said to be haunted.

All cemeteries are confined within heavy gates and walls, where ancient prayers have been written on rock, and they close down before the strike of midnight since a lot of dread and doom surround these places and a lot of obscure practices and covens still go on to this day.

What else could you ask for inspiration?

Any stories about this recording session. You told me an awesome story about voices appearing on Numa Campa last time we talked. Are there any interesting experiences associated with this album's recording as well?

There are no voices this time, but there sure are notable facts! Since we wanted an intro with keyboards, paying our respects to The King, we knew we had to do something special, so our producer arranged for that intro to actually be recorded at the church with a real church organ and real church choir. So we went to the Black Madonna Church, Jasna Góra in Czestochowa, Poland (which is the city where we recorded the album) and were fortunate enough to get this amazingly insane intro. It couldn’t have been better.

Now given the fact that we were five clueless dirty slobs trying to pull off a record of our asses in five days on a top studio, I figure the situation speaks for itself! A lot of shit happened, hadn’t we the dirtiest of reputations around! Between gallons of vodka, arrests, women and barely managing to get out of the country alive, I think we did pretty well. Not to say that Poland is the main amphetamine exporter in Europe and that stuff is cheaper to get than a pack of cigars! I don’t remember sleeping at all, Dalton also, we were on instant coffee, cigars and heavy duty studio work through the whole week; and I would be very happy do it all over again many times.

On a different, more obscure note, if you give the album cover the right angle, you will see something really creepy. And who knows how it got there…!

How have your recent live shows gone? You've played a handful of shows recently. Who have you played with? I saw you did a show with Portrait?

MIDNIGHT PRIEST shows have been growing immensely in crowd attendance and die hard fans. There was a somewhat dead spot for us within the more sceptical part of the underground scene and even though Portuguese magazines still don’t want to believe that we’re the biggest Heavy Metal act in Portugal, we’ve been doing pretty well here, the last MIDNIGHT PRIEST show of the year got 200 metal maniacs screaming their lungs out and partying hard, singing our songs and going mad all over the place! What a fucking badass atmosphere… and taking a few exceptions, I really think the Portuguese metal scene stinks - band wise. There’s no fire, no balls, it looks more like a graduation party if you ask me, but we sure know how to give people a great fucking time, and that’s all we care for; if live shows suck, there’s no point for the band to exist. We aren’t ego masturbators and we don’t live of the “glories from the past” we’re straight forward Heavy Metal Machine and we’ll drink, fight and fuck in the oldest of ways. We’re Punks in league with Satan and a lot of people don’t get that!

Now, on the Ireland shows with Portrait, we actually didn’t make it out there because there was a misunderstanding with the promoter. It turned out that we had to pay for the whole thing, we already had paid for the trips and that’s fine, but it turned out that even transporting and food had to be financed; not to mention shelter because any sewer will do just as any good as any hotel suite. But come one, just take a look at any tabloid and figure out why we can’t afford these kind of touring, we’re even more miserable than we ever were, and it’s impossible to pay for everything. We will go anywhere, I mean ANYWHERE, but you got to give us at least some beer. And been that said, I sincerely hope that we will play in Ireland one day, I know of a lot of MIDNIGHT PRIEST fans in Cork, Dublin, Belfast, all over the place. Cheers!!

You also just put out a T-shirt! How many of these are available? How can people interested in the shirt get one!?

The t-shirt was printed on very short stock, like 30 pieces or so, and they’re all gone, but I guess we’ll print some new ones with new artwork and improved quality. Anyway, anyone interested in merchandise can email the band and we will see what we can do, we want to spread the word out as far as we possibly can, and a few new releases will be out next year in Brazil and Greece, so stay tuned!

What else is there that you would like to say about Midnight Priest? Any touring planned for overseas this year? Possibly the USA?

This year we’ll have a couple of shows in Spain, and are plans are that we will be in Greece too, we have been planning a tour for quite a while and hopefully it will happen this upcoming year of 2012. All Hell Breaks Loose!!!

It would be a fucking blast to play in the USA, what a highlight that would be! I guess my brains would gore out from the excitement!! Man that would be the ultimate thing I’m sure. And if anyone has enough interest to make it happen please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’re up for anything, and anything will fly for MIDNIGHT PRIEST. We’ll eat sawdust and drink metal for all we care!

Having received several emails from people in the States asking for shows and distributing our stuff overseas, and being our label based in California, I don’t see why not. There’s an uprising legion of fans in the NY, NJ area and on the West Coast, so I figure this would be absolutely doable no doubt about it. And I tell you, you guys will have a great fucking time!!

The Heavy Metal Machine is burning HOT & HEAVY!!

THE PRIEST IS BACK!!!

Thank you so much for having us Jon, and hope to meet you very soon, total support and dedication to the US Metal Underground; it’s all our pleasure to be part of its interest.

And to all the Metal Maniacs out the in the US, we’ll meet you one day and burn those stages to the fucking ground, we were born to fucking ROCK!!!

Thanks again for the interview!

________________________________________________

For more info on MIDNIGHT PRIEST:

Headbang to our album online: Here

For shows, interviews and hate mail: midnightpriestcult@gmail.com
Official Myspace: Here
Official Facebook: Here
Ze Metalica: Here

Buy our records or be damned!!!

www.aforja.org

www.stormspell.com

Maximum Oversatan - Too Evil For Hell Demo

Maximum Oversatan - Too Evil For Hell

Fans of Venom and Motorhead and crusty dirty first wave black metal rejoice, Maximum Oversatan take the formulas of the classics and worship them openly and righteously. Metal demos as metal demos should be. Too Evil For Hell is an unsubtle mixture of alcoholic recklessness, overt satanic influence and total disregard for modernity. Sodom and Venom covers and three original tracks fuming with malice and lust for blood.

To order email: Orion_metalhead@hotmail.com

CTP - 001 - I (QTY = 50 Copies) Sold Out
CTP - 001 - II (QTY = 50 Copies) Sold Out

LINKS

Maximum Oversatan Official Facebook
Maximum Oversatan Official Youtube

REVIEWS

11/06/2012 - Heavy Metal Spotlight

Sometimes, bands and their releases can be absolutely intriguing, and Maximum Oversatan are one such band. As the forum post which introduced me to the band said, "They sound like their name". Frankly, that was enough to get me interested, and if the name hits the same switches in your head as mine, you should be too. The normal order of things is that bands ask me if I'll review their material, but not this time. At risk of sounding like a cheeky bastard, I directly asked for a link to their demo so I could listen to it and review it, and that's precisely what I plan to do.

Picture, if you will, what would happen if a band were to travel back in time and distil the essence of a 1986 not-quite-black-metal-yet Mayhem, and then, to gain incredible devilish metal powers, drink it, presumably with Jack Daniels. Maximum Oversatan are a bit like that. Speed metal, with more than a touch of black-metal thrown in to the recipe. Raucous, raw and with a motorcycle-riding, greasy and dirty sound which the demo's artwork, and the bands name, as I've already mentioned, really encapsulates. The whole demo is a glimpse into a mad and rather satanic world of chaotic, percussive and rabid metal - Thundering drums carry the swift, vicious tracks along with a possessed energy and natural, but also very thick forceful and solid presence - it may be a demo, and quite a raw one at that, but the drum sound is certainly one to be admired - Clearly drums that have been recorded well from the onset, as opposed to meddled with excessively afterwards. Soaring angrily over the percussion, the vocals are caustic and enraged sounding - not strictly a conventional black-metal shriek, but something frequently deeper and more gruff, a harsher and more bestial version of, for instance, Venom, as opposed to a shrill and piercing screech. This has the effect of giving the music quite a muscular edge, which is enjoyable to say the least, and makes for a more raucous and meaty listen. Adding to this is the guitar tone, which while quite treble-heavy, also has a lower end with a rasping, buzzing tone which makes a number of the riffs into the sonic equivalent of an iron fist.

You can tell a lot about a band by the songs which they choose to cover, and on Too Evil for Hell, the covers probably say a lot more than I possibly could about Maximum Oversatan's musical direction. Going by their sound, I can't say I'm surprised by the presence of both a Sodom cover and a Venom one, both of which are done with an enjoyable level of creativity and spiced with Maximum Oversatan's own style, particularly "Welcome to Hell", which the band have taken and made into perhaps even more of a swaggering, spitting occult monster of a track than Venom made it the first time around. Being a demo, one might expect the production to be a little bit rough - and it is, there's no denying that. At the same time, there's not much point in denying it, because the rough and haphazard production fits the music's coarseness like a glove, in fact, I'd be happy to hear an album or EP with this level of neatness, or enjoyable lack thereof. The guitar tone is a little bit buried in places, although in others it sounds great, which suggests a bit of inconsistency in the volume levels, but given that the whole demo is something of a maelstrom, it doesn't have too much of an effect on the balance and flow of the demo. Perhaps the original songs aren't quite anthems or instant classics just yet, but the whole demo has a real sense of solidness and an attitude which metal can never have enough of.

01/04/2012 - Foul Feast Of Flesh Blog

"Maximum Oversatan reeks of old school filth. Upon first listen it should be very apparent where this New Jersey duo pulls their influence from. These dudes harken back to speed metal and the earliest days of black metal, an era that not many new bands seem to be gravitating towards. Often echoing Venom's early material (whom they also cover a track from on this demo) but never to the point where it seems like some shitty tribute band. Consisting of three original tracks and two covers the demo gives a nice sample taste of what this band is all about.

The first thing that one will notice when putting on this demo is the raw, throwback sound. Naturally early demos from bands are fairly lofi but if this were to be played with no background knowledge of the band pinpointing a recording date would be an impossible feat. The vocals are delivered by what appears to be a possessed man on the brink of insanity. Little technique is used and it fits perfectly with the stripped down sound Maximum Oversatan churns out. The three original tracks are fairly straightforward and to the point. Sure, at times some of the riffs may seem vaguely familiar but they hit the mark where it counts with this style, delivery. The thrashier moments on these tracks come with a high level of intensity and are sure to whip your neck into a seizure-like frenzy.

Overall Too Evil For Hell is exactly what the name would lead you to believe, a sinister, primitive slab of heavy metal. Satan would be proud but unfortunately he is not evil enough to listen. Given that we only get the chance to hear about ten minutes of original material here it is hard to form too solid of an opinion. I like what I hear though, and if you like the earlier bands that influenced black metal chances are you will find yourself playing this a lot more then once. Give this a listen, thrash around like a barbarian and perform some sort of bloody ritual. "

02/13/2012 - Witching Metal Webzine

"Do you like d-beats? Do you like Satan? Goats? Hell? Tits? Then MAXIMUM FUCKING OVERSATAN is for you!

Torn from the foetid bowels of New Jersey in 2011, this horrid horde of hellraising miscreants sprang was unleashed upon the world late last year with the debut demo Too Evil For Hell. With production and songwriting halfway between early Sodom and Hellhammer with a syringe full of punk to the arm for good measure, this shit is any beer swilling metalpunk's wet dream.

The demo contains 3 original songs and 2 covers. The originals are rough, sloppy satanic speed metal assaults that follow in the anthemic footsteps of Burst Command Til War, To Hell and Back, etc. Just TRY not to sing along to the chorus of Reaper's Night after a couple listens. The originals all wear influences on the sleeve but the riffs are cool enough that it doesn't matter. The covers are (surprise surprise) Welcome to Hell and Outbreak of Evil, both of which sound great belted out by frontman Atomic Destructor From Hell.

Some listeners might be turned off by the extremely raw production, occasionally off kilter drumming, and overall sloppiness of the whole affair. But y'know what? Fuck you. That's part of the magic. This sounds like it came from about 1984, just before thrash and black metal properly got underway; posers fucking beware. To sum it up simply:

ONLY DEATH IS REAL! FALSE WILL BURNING AND DIED! OUGH OUGH OUGH HEAVY METAL!!!! "

03/07/2012 - Metal Archives - Zodijackyl

There's a Sodom cover, there's a Venom cover, and there are three original songs that I'd believe if you told me were rough cuts from either of those bands. Maximum Oversatan put a more extreme edge on the spirit of these bands - they sound furious, hell bent on making extreme heavy metal at reasonably high speeds. The fierce feel of the music is more like that of the bands who paid tribute to Venom and Sodom in the late 80s, with huge sounding drums and dirty guitars and vocals mixed together quite roughly.

It took a while to get used to the drums being so loud and booming in the mix, though they seem to calm down a bit on the later tracks. The sound of everything is pretty much perfect for the band on the title track, where Satanic speed metal meets Motorhead's rock and roll - the drums get a bit faster, the vocals are coherent and crunchy, and the band fully lives up to its name. It's rough, rockin', and has just enough of an extreme metal tinge to make it really appealing to fans of the retro blackish speed metal type stuff. All of the recordings are first takes, so it's sufficiently rough without being sloppy, nothing at all is polished.

It's easy to describe the band simply - they're called "Maximum Oversatan", there's a Venom cover, a Sodom cover, and the songs in between... and they're good.

PHOTOS

Denial Fiend - Live At Champs 11/17/2011

Another recording from Champs in Trenton, this one of Denial Fiend. Killer set. Definitely check out this band live if you get a chance. Download the live audio here: Denial Fiend Live At Champs 11.17.11.

Check out all the other audio downloads here: Audio Archives.