Release Date: May 23, 2025
Label: Metal Blade Records
Rating: 4/5
With Steel, Rust, and Disgust, Midnight rips the lid off the past and throws a Molotov cocktail into the archives of punk and metal’s most feral corners. This isn't your typical covers album — it’s a snarling, high-octane homage to the misfits, maniacs, and trailblazers that inspired one of Cleveland’s rawest underground acts. Frontman Athenar (the sole force behind Midnight) channels his deep reverence for the genre’s dirtier history into something both brutal and reverent.
Opening with the original track “Cleveland Metal,” the album immediately sets the tone. It’s a gritty love letter to the city that birthed so many of these obscure, cult-classic acts. With its thunderous riffs and stripped-down production, the song doesn’t just pay tribute — it sounds like it crawled straight out of a rusted-out basement in the Midwest. It’s the perfect gateway into what follows: ten blistering covers of punk and proto-metal underground deep cuts.
What makes Steel, Rust, and Disgust special is Midnight’s ability to drag forgotten gems into the spotlight without sanding off any of the grime. Covers of tracks like Electric Eels’ “Agitated” and Krator’s “Iron Beast” are performed with such venom and drive that they feel like Midnight originals. The band doesn’t just mimic — they mutate. Every track is reimagined through the lens of Midnight’s filthy, speed-drenched sound, with fuzz-drenched guitars, guttural vocals, and a breakneck pace that rarely lets up.
Athenar’s production choices are also worth applauding. He doesn’t try to clean things up — quite the opposite. The raw, unfiltered sound is part of the album’s identity. You can almost smell the cigarette smoke and hear the beer bottles clinking in the background. It’s unrefined, on purpose, and all the more powerful for it. This is music that was born in dive bars, not polished in million-dollar studios.
Beneath the distortion and fury, there’s a real sense of purpose. This is a record about legacy — not just Midnight’s, but the lineage of obscure, aggressive music that helped shape them. It celebrates bands that most people never heard of, and it gives them a new chance to roar through the speakers of today’s underground faithful.
While Steel, Rust, and Disgust may not reinvent Midnight’s sound, it doesn’t need to. It’s a fiery, reverent celebration of music made by outcasts for outcasts. For longtime fans, it's another notch on Midnight's bullet belt of unrelenting releases. For newcomers, it’s a wild, grinning gateway into the shadowy world that Midnight inhabits — a world of steel, rust, and glorious, glorious disgust.
