MIDNIGHT FORCE - John, Ansgar and Brenden

💿 Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal JOHN, ANSGAR and BRENDEN of MIDNIGHT FORCE! Welcome!! John: Hey, guys - it’s a pleasure to speak with you too. Thanks for the kind words about the album, too - much appreciated!

💿 Can you tell us somethin’about your early days of your career? When is this all begun? Which bands have influenced you and What’s the matter of your moniker? John: Well, the band started from an older group three of us were part of called Disaster Area, a kind of glam/hard rock band.

The bass player couldn’t make a couple of gigs so Brenden here stepped in to join us, and we’d written a more proto-NWOTHM song (Lost in Time, if anyone remembers that one) with him prior to one gig, so we decided, why not try and build on that?

So we formed a new band and wrote a few more songs in the same vein as that, and things started to work out really well in practice so we’re still carrying on with it.

As for the name, it was between Midnight Force and a few others; we reckoned that sounded the best for a band name but some of our song titles, such as Crystal Talon and Restless Blade, started life as possible band names!

💿 Your first full-length “DUNSINANE” is out for a few days.. Can you tell us abput its composition process? Are you satisfied about this platter? We’re literally goin’mad!! Ansgar: We wrote the songs over the course of about a year. Some songs were in our live set even before the “Restless Blade” EP saw the light of day.

We refined them, played them live tons of times until we thought the time was right to record them. Brenden (bass) and me (guitar) are sharing the bulk of the lyric writing process and we present our song ideas to the band and then arrange them together.

Brenden: Usually lyrics will start with me reading about a cool battle or era of history, then either I’ll have a riff kicking around or I’ll get inspired by the lyrics and jam something out. A couple of the songs came about just because the choruses jumped into my head on the train and got stuck there, “Down with the King” and “Killer” are the two I can think of, then working back from there. Usually it seems we pick historical times that aren’t often covered by metal bands, which is accidental but I like, for example Roman history and the Baltic crusades.

We’re all really satisfied with the release, we worked with our close friend Mike recording and mixing it, and so we could be totally relaxed and try out anything we wanted while doing it, I took on a lot of the production side of it myself and I feel like for all the hard work it took I’ve made it the best I possibly could.

💿 The real “news” in music industry is the return of vinyl; What’s your feeling about this classic format and the current music “business”? John: We’d absolutely love to get some vinyl made, but for some bands it can be prohibitively expensive because not just anywhere does it.

Ansgar: We of course think it’s a great thing that vinyl is coming back and we are planning to release our album on that format too. Especially in the metal scene it’s a huge thing of course and it makes our scene one of the best for buying physical copies and directly supporting the artists. In the time of downloads and decreasing profits from album sales it is an important stronghold and it makes me proud that the metal scene is playing such a big part in holding up these values.

💿 DUNSINANE is a self-release. A choice to be more free or is it really difficult to find a label that believes in you? John: I think given where we are at the moment, producing the album ourselves was the ideal way to do it in terms of both creativity and finances. We have access to a lot of equipment and friends with the skills needed to produce and mix the music and what have you, as well as the patience to put up with us. But we wouldn’t rule out hearing from any labels, for sure - a good few of our fellow bands have done well in that respect.

Ansgar: Yeah, we are not signed to a label but we will work together with Eat Metal Records for the release of the album on vinyl and maybe in the future we will find a label that is interested in us and we like to work with ourselves for further releases.

The old school metal scene in general is very well connected and supportive so we are certain we will find the ideal partner for us sooner or later.

💿 What do you think about the renewed interest for NWOBHM and Traditional HM? Love for vintage or a new golden era? John: Might sound like a cop-out answer, but I reckon it could be both to some extent. We really like our old-school metal (you might have guessed) so for us it was more the former but a lot of people seem to have had the same thought process as us.

All the bands in our scene that play old-school metal do it out of an earnest love for the genre - it just so happens that there might be enough of us to bring in a new era of it!

Ansgar: I agree, I don’t think it’s just, as many naysayers proclaim, misguided nostalgia. There are a lot of “old school” or “revival” Heavy Metal bands that are highly individual and fresh sounding, and we like to aspire to that as well.

On the other hand there are also bands that are mind-numbingly boring and copy Iron Maiden riffs or melodies without a touch of individuality, but those are not the ones we like to be associated with.

Brenden: It’s always been the music that makes me the happiest and live, the one I have the most fun singing along to, so I reckon the revival on the band side of things is just people being honest and doing only what they love to play the most.

💿 Can you tell us somethin’about your next live projects? Ansgar: We are currently playing a German tour in support of our album, then we will head over to Ireland for Siege of Limerick, with Asomvel, Risen Prophecy and many more.

In May we are organising a wee Epic Metal fest with Solstice, High Spirits, Doomocracy, Zuul, Arkham Witch and Watchers Guard, in Glasgow.

London, Greece and other new places are on the cards for the rest of the year.

We’d love to finally play Italy of course!

💿 We love the cover of your album..Who made it? John: That’s the work of ImmortalPict Illustrations! We’ve known Alasdair for a good few years now and we’re all too aware of his talent, so we decided to commission him to do something for us, and we’re really pleased with how it turned out.

Ansgar: Yeah we knew his drawing style for a while and we thought it’d fit our vision for the cover perfectly and so it did indeed! We couldn’t be happier with it!

💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal!

Brenden: Thanks for your own time, and for taking an interest in us!

(Pics from Band's Fb)

#nwothm #midnightforce