{"id":104137,"date":"2024-10-21T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T23:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=104137"},"modified":"2024-10-28T09:34:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T09:34:00","slug":"album-review-midnight-race-heavy-metal-owls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-midnight-race-heavy-metal-owls\/","title":{"rendered":"MIDNIGHT RACE – Heavy Metal Owls (2024) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIDNIGHT RACE
Heavy Metal Owls<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nSteel Shark (2024)<\/span>
Rating: 6\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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As a band previously unknown to me, Ecuador\u2019s Midnight Race come equipped with an album cover that, art wise, reminds me of 80s releases by Cities or Shok Paris. Musically, the guys bridge the ever recognisable gap between heavy and speed metal resulting in 31 minutes of familiar yet enjoyable music.<\/p>\n

The star of the show here is the busy axe work which scurried throughout this debut full-length record like a mouse being pursued by a cat. Due to the ever shifting guitar there remains a freshness, although for many I can see the biggest criticism being the vocals. I\u2019m probably going to be in the minority because I enjoy the naive and almost punky gasps which have an early 80s drive and rawness about them. Sure, Edd Onslaught hardly dominates the record as his moniker suggests he should, in fact he barely leads, but his tone mixes well with the rest of the fire and fury.<\/p>\n

At just 31 minutes in duration the album doesn\u2019t exactly bed in immediately, but I did eventually warm to its charms due to songs such as speedball \u2018Return Of The Darkness\u2019 and the almost punky \u2018Final Attack\u2019 and \u2018Rebel & Wild\u2019, the latter sounding like something the legendary all female troupe The Runaways would churn out. Meanwhile, \u2018Midnight Rider\u2019 is a full on speed metal assault where the guitars and drums zip by at quite the pace, and that\u2019s where Midnight Race sits, between a punky energy and lighter flurries of speed.<\/p>\n

Yes, the album does lack weight and spite considering the two styles the band adopts, but there\u2019s enough energy here to provide a quick shot to the veins.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIDNIGHT RACEHeavy Metal Owls Steel Shark (2024)Rating: 6\/10 As a band previously unknown to me, Ecuador\u2019s Midnight Race come equipped with an album cover that, art wise, reminds me of 80s releases by Cities or Shok Paris. Musically, the guys bridge the ever recognisable gap between heavy and speed metal resulting in 31 minutes of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5813],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-midnight-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104138,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104137\/revisions\/104138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}