Midnite Hellion interview by Powerslave

Midnite Hellion has been a force to be reckoned with since 2011. Supporting Thrash and Death Metal bands on the East Coast, they are promoting their 2 most recent releases on Clawhammer Records. Toby had a chance to catch up with them and ask about their past, present and future and learn more about Midnite Hellion.

POWERSLAVES      Welcome to Metal Messiah Radio! Let's start with your band name Midnite Hellion! Whats the story behind the name?

MIDNITE HELLION    Greetings Toby! Thank you for taking the time to do the interview! The name Midnite Hellion doesn’t have a meaning per-se, but was derived from a fairly lengthy naming process to find a band name that was both original and also had never been used before by another band. The word and spelling of Midnite came from the Krokus song, “Midnite Maniac,” and the word “Hellion” was inspired by the WASP song of the same name. The alternate spelling was used because the words stacked better in the logo, keeping each word as seven letters each. Boring answer, we know, so we could also say that it comes from the old wives tale of nothing good happens after midnight, so we always try to perform earlier than that!

POWERSLAVES     Tell us a brief history of your band?

MIDNITE HELLION  The band officially started on April 4th, 2011 in Trenton, NJ. Starting as a five-piece band with a twin-guitar sound, we took over the NJ/NY/PA region rather quickly; some might say that a Metal Storm was born that year! We started out strong, supporting the likes of Warbringer and Obituary at our early concerts, and started to incorporate a stage show fairly early on. In November, we released our demo cassette, “The Fever,” and were ridiculed for the cassette format, but ironically enough, three pressing were issued and each sold out within weeks. Even more ironically, not even a year later major bands and labels started releasing their albums on cassette again.
Our next release, “Enter The Unknown,” was released in September 2012 and was followed by a tour with Prime Evil that fall. More regional dates followed supporting National Acts such as Artillery, Whiplash, Morbid Saint, Blood Feast, and Deceased, and our legions of Hellions kept growing stronger.

We signed with Witches Brew Records in 2013, and released the “Hour of the Wolf” single on Black Friday 2013. Originally, we were going to follow up rather quickly with a full-length album, but supporting that single ended up taking much more time than we could have ever anticipated. We were invited to Chicago for the Ragnarökkr Metal Apocalypse Festival 2014, which had us sharing the stage with bands such as Grim Reaper, RIOT, Picture, Visigoth, Black Death, and many more. Almost upon landing back in Jersey, we rushed over to St. Vitus in Brooklyn to support Toxik’s first US show since reforming, and the rest of the year was filled with dates supporting Raven, Diamond Head, and Overkill, which brought us to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ for the first time.

Over time, we scaled back to our current power trio line-up, developing a much heavier sound than we had in our beginnings. Things started happening rather quickly again on the live front during the writing process in 2016, and we had numerous headlining dates and support dates with Anvil, Enforcer, Hatchet, and Jag Panzer, before we put a halt to performing live to focus on the record.  We headed into the recording studio with intentions to have an early 2017 release, but we had more offers that we couldn’t refuse. During drum tracking, we escaped from the studio to support Flotsam & Jetsam and Helstar which lead into more live dates. Back out of focus, vocal tracking was interrupted with a return to the Starland Ballroom supporting Dirkschneider, then we found ourselves embarking on a mini-tour in Virginia Beach and a Wilmington, DE date with Tower. Upon completion of the run, we returned again to the Starland Ballroom supporting Yngwie Malmsteen, and a few weeks later made our live debut in Manhattan, which was directly supporting Metalfier at the Gramercy Theatre in NYC.

We finally finished mixing and mastering the album, and “Condemned To Hell” was released by Witches Brew Records on September 15th, 2017, with a record release concert held at the Starland Ballroom with Exodus and Obituary. The legendary 89.5 FM WSOU, Seton Hall’s Pirate Radio, had selected the album to be part of their New Music Monday’s program.

The recently reformed Combat Records, now operated by David Ellefson of Megadeth and producer Thom Hazaert, had selected our song “Cross The Line” to be part of their Bullets Vol. 1.0 compilation, which saw a worldwide release in April 2018. We embarked on a fairly lengthy run of regional dates in support of “Condemned To Hell,” which brought us to Baltimore twice this year, and we’ve made our return to Brooklyn over at the Brooklyn Bazaar with Combat. Having not performed in NYC in over a year, it was a very welcome return.

Around the time of our concerts with Vicious Circle and Ross the Boss of Manowar, we received unfortunate news that our label, Witches Brew, had folded, so we are currently seeking new label representation.

POWERSLAVES      Tell us about your song "Enter the Nightmare"

MIDNITE HELLION   “Enter The Nightmare” was written by our drummer Drew Rizzo musically and by our bassist and singer Rich Kubik lyrically, and fully arranged by the entire band. It is an interesting piece inspired by a dream that Rich had years ago, involving a number of terrifying things happening to him but mainly focused around a vampire and a town being plagued by vampire attacks. It starts off very theatrically with the vampire clawing himself out of his grave, starving after being newly transformed. What follows is the stalking, and attacks on villagers. The second verse switches to more of a view from the villagers perspectives, going from a view of people holding up crosses to try to ward away the demon, to the inevitable lynch mob being created to hunt the vampire down. During the solos, you actually have to listen for it, but there is a scream there. That scream is the vampire being staked, and left to burn in the sun, and as we go to the final chorus and the sun rises, we go back to the intro acoustic, with the bells chiming in the background as the sun rises. From the first and third person perspective, this was one hell of a nightmare, and we invite you to enter it every time you listen to the song.

POWERSLAVES       What is your outlook on the record industry today?

MIDNITE HELLION   The record industry is a shrinking ship, but it definitely is not a sinking ship. Many labels have closed their doors, including about half of the majors in the last 20 years, so the options are more limited than ever. It’s become more difficult to break through more than ever since the world is flooded with bands but not with labels, so to have one band get noticed out of the sea of bands is worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Labels and bands have had to get more creative than ever to create buzz, and more financial burden falls on the bands since most labels cannot offer tour support.

POWERSLAVES       How do you promote your band and shows?

MIDNITE HELLION   Every which way possible! We find that the old school methods are still the most effective, such as distributing flyers at concerts and hanging up posters at stores. In addition, online promotion is definitely essential in today’s environment, as well as mailing lists. For releases, we do utilize PR services and have worked with Clawhammer PR on our most recent two releases, “Condemned To Hell” and “Hour of the Wolf.”

POWERSLAVES      How would fans get a hold of your Merch?

MIDNITE HELLION  We have our current selection available directly through us at Midnite Hellion Website, Our Big Cartel Store, and Our Band Camp Page We’ve got CDs, cassettes, hats, shirts hoodies, pins, stickers, neck braces…everything you need! More outlets coming soon, too!

POWERSLAVES       What inspires you to do what you do?

MIDNITE HELLION    Simply put, life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. Heavy Metal is our life, it’s in our blood, and quite frankly, it’s all we know. There’s no greater feeling than looking out into an audience and seeing people enthusiastic about what we’re doing. As it’s our life, Heavy Metal is our love, too, and we will always pursue our dreams in search of eternal happiness. We were born to rock, and we will rock until we die.

POWERSLAVES        Does Midnite Hellion have any tour dates or Venues in the future?

MIDNITE HELLION  We have some plans in the works currently, but confirmed and announced concerts include supporting Flotsam & Jetsam again on May 23rd at Dingbatz in Clifton, NJ. Keep an eye out, we’ve got more in store!

POWERSLAVES     Is there anything you would like to add?

MIDNITE HELLION Thank you for taking the time to interview us! Keep up to date with Midnite Hellion at http://www.midnitehellion.com, and we’re all over the social networks as well. Find us at Facebook, Our 2nd Facebook , Instagram, twitter, and youtube. More in store coming your way, so keep an eye out! Thanks to everyone for their continued support, and keep the flame of Metal burning strong!