Midnight Rider
Manifestation

According to the press sheet, this band is a cult band in the underground. They have one EP released in 2008 under their belt and this Manifest is their debut album that comes nine years after their foundation. The band begun as a Japanese-German band who have now become a band with only German members. Like many other underground acts they seem to be content to emulate their heroes rather than set the tone themselves, I am not sure that is the way to go even in a world plagued by nostalgia and romanticising of times long gone. So, what about this album then, it has a gloomy photo on the cover and it kind of screams seventies rock music in the vein of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest of that era – and that is how it sounds as well.

Nothing original whatsoever is what I hear when I listen to this album, I also hear a vocalist that sounds a bit like the guy called Ozzy when he was in his prime a hundred years ago. The songs number as ten and they play for about fifty minutes, the songs are quite typical of an album in this genre, the variation is not much but fortunately fifty minutes is at least not a super long playing time so the ones into this kind of music should be able to bare with it for the duration. The production is decent, sounds a bit dated though. Overall I find this album being a bit uninspiring, like something I have heard before and I wasn’t too impressed then – and I am not very impressed now.

It is a decent album and for those who liked Judas Priest and Black Sabbath in the seventies it is probably a good bet, but if you look for something new it is not that inspiring or exciting. The songs are okay but none of them really standout or impress me, they just sound like old songs that feels a bit like they would have been best left forgotten. Of course there is probably always a safe bet to go down the nostalgic route but I cannot personally see any major merit in copying what other have done, especially not when you are not doing it fantastically well. I think Midnight Rider offer a decent but ultimately quite dull album.

In the end I think it is an album that can be enjoyed by fans of seventies heavy rock music, if you are one of those you should like this album. However, as a critic I find this album quite uninteresting, and rather dull. It is just a collection of songs that might have been interesting once, very long ago.

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