Jochen Blumenthal
Midnight Rider
Hello Lior, it's a pleasure for me too! Well, after the split of Metal Inquisitor I thought I would be less busy but Midnight Rider and actual Metalucifer keep me on working every day.
November 30th was exactly one year ago that Metal Inquisitor broke up. Of course it is still a pity because we were still successful and could have going on with Metal Inquisitor for many more years. Blame it on the pandemic it´s too easy. For sure a band needs to get together somehow in regular intervals. Otherwise members lose their will to work together. But the problems began just before the pandemic. Havoc just quit in December 2019. From that point the balance in the band has got lost. Problems in a band are sometimes identical like problems in usual relationships. You can´t say what went wrong but at the end it´s just over anyway.
Midnight Rider stood in the shadow of Metal Inquisitor and Metalucifer because we had big problems to find the right drummer. Retrospective it is hard to believe that we were searching so many years for the right member. Maybe due to the fact we were living in different cities in the meantime. In the beginning we wanted to have a German / Japanese coalition like Metalucifer sometimes is but Japanese people are so busy that it has been hopeless to try this any further. Finally, in 2016 we found someone in our city. From this point we were working more intense together and Midnight Rider felt like a real band.
As for the music you are right. I felt that I wanted to do even more vintage music than Metal Inquisitor was for me. In 70ies Heavy Rock is so much more to discover than in following styles. That attracts me as a musician a lot.
Indeed, it was a goal to have this futuristic flavor somehow. After Wayne wrote the lyrics "Beyond the blood red Horizon" we were thinking about what the Cover Artwork could look like. We found a photography of an artist which had this futuristic impression of a city. So we came to this conclusion to have this style on that album. …can´t say what's on the third one. But I like sci-fi anyway.
We produced this album in difficult, strange times and from today's point of view I think that "Beyond the Blood Red Horizon" might rather unconsciously reflect a certain utopia or dystopia as a guideline. So there were definitely influences on lyrics like Intruder, Rising Dawn and Demons, for example. They were written in the isolation of the pandemic, more precisely in the hard lockdown, and of course that had a major impact on the content and story.
For lyrics with reference to the present or the current state of the world there are certainly enough inspirations but in the opener "Beyond the Blood Red Horizon" we were rather inspired by the space rock band Hawkwind and just wanted to describe a fictional view into the future.
About the lyrics Wayne told me that they are based on real experiences, life circumstances and current events, but sometimes they are just future fictions. In this respect, I hope that he was able to convey not only variety but also a certain sub-cultural, gloomy vibration and real, convincing authenticity to the listener. The lyrics deal with many different topics and don't want to commit to just one topic.
The silent movie Metropolis had inspired us to propose a futuristic cover for our second longplayer. In addition, the cover should be unconventional, but also much more expressive than the Manifestation cover. The intention was a fictional look into the future, describing an all-encompassing change of times and the dawn of a new age. These heavy colours are making this Artwork really unique and distinctive. On T-shirt it looks even more great.
The development of Rock from the 60ies to the end of 70ies was running very fast. In the 70ies came this typical style what Metal should be all about one day. There is so much do discover as a metal fan and as a guitarist. For example, guitar equipment in these days has got nothing to do with stuff you can get today. All those reissues are more or less fake. I could write ten pages about that because it´s so impenetrable on first sight what happened then. Anyway, we decided that our focus is just on the era middle 70ies ´till 1980. I think that earlier influences are not "metal" enough. Metal fans nowadays can´t deal with this. Maybe it´s in their ears too much hippie-like.
On our first album "Manifestation" the vocals sometimes had to reach to the performance limit. So on "Beyond the blood red Horizon" I tried to write the songs in the way they fit more to the vocals. At the end the vocals became deeper and stronger in my opinion. I think the most different is the whole sound. Vocals, bass and guitars are recorded just by myself except drums. In this way I had better opportunities to get the sound I really like.
My goal was to ignore sometimes recording standards from nowadays. For the drums we just used 4 microphones but the studio wasn´t the best choice for it. I´m not completely satisfied with this. But for the rest I could get the most out of it. The guitar sound I like a lot because I had a lot of time to figure this out. Often I just recorded one rhythm guitar. That gives a lot of headroom to the songs. About the songs as themselves I wanted to get different influences like Budgie or Rainbow. I can´t say if we succeed because during songwriting songs develop in another direction.
Recording instruments is somehow easy but to mix and master you need someone with a big know-how. Janosch has a lot experience and one thing which is the most important: He loves this kind of metal too so he can feel and understand what this album should be all about. He delivered just the opposite of what we experienced in other studios. It makes no sense if the sound engineer is just dispassionate. That kills Rock´n´Roll.
To set the title track as the first track of an album is not common in metal. So we had some doubt if this is clever. But the idea to have an intro at the song "Beyond the blood red Horizon" came just late in my mind. This short intro made the song very classic and more rock-like. It felt just right to set this song at first. By the way in the beginning I didn't liked the chorus so much. But I knew that others could like that simple style. At the end I just like it as well.
The basic of that song was influenced by Judas Priest and the chorus by Black Sabbath. I can´t say how this song has developed at the end. I heard it too often meanwhile. The chorus I like a lot. It´s so melodious and catchy. I think the vocals of Wayne made this song better as is having been from the start.
Oh yes, recently I discovered on my home recorder a lot of new ideas. Maybe at least stuff to create 7 songs already. I didn´t remember all this because I just record ideas while I´m cooking, watching TV or playing with my daughter for example. As a father you have not so much free time so I can be happy about these "daydreams". Wayne´s Voice is often Rob Halford-like so you can expect a lot of early Judas Priest influences again.
Well, the market is flooded with traditional metal bands. We have good reviews only and still a lot of interviews to do but it´s not easy to enforce the band in the scene. There are some Open Airs on schedule in summer 2023 but we have too many free weekends in spring. So, bookers welcome!
Thanks for your kindness and these words. Good to know that there are people who are open minded for metal productions offside the standard.
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