DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS is proud to present MIDNIGHT PREY’s highly anticipated second album, Jenseitsritt, on CD and vinyl LP formats.
It’s been a not-very-long but very strange trip for Germany’s MIDNIGHT PREY. Formed in 2012 in the Black Forest but eventually moving to Hamburg in 2015, the power-trio toiled away for their first decade until the release of 2019’s Uncertain Times. Indeed aptly titled, MIDNIGHT PREY’s debut album became something of a modern classic with its never-belabored, effortlessly cool mix of ‘70s hard rock, ‘80s traditional metal, and classic punk and speed metal. Then, in that cursed year of 2020, the band called it quits…for a couple years. Thankfully, when they returned in 2023, with the Black Cat / Sword and Shield EP (reprised on the Gathered Under Open Skies split with fellow Teutonic labelmates FIRMAMENT), all was good: MIDNIGHT PREY had not lost one step, and were more poignant than ever.
And that poignancy perhaps reaches its apotheosis with their long-awaited second album, Jenseitsritt. Here, MIDNIGHT PREY don’t sound all that removed from their past – a clean-yet-dirty surge that’s equal parts punk, rock, and metal – but it’s all the little details that then add up to the overarching work that make Jenseitsritt such a unique and incredibly engaging listen. That (uniquely) kinda-clean tone the trio use is somehow more ethereal and heartstrings-pulling here, each strum and note-bend ringing resoundingly straight into the listener’s soul. And yet, MIDNIGHT PREY rhythmically sound more restless across the seven-song / 37-minute album, their raw energy bubbling over into feral, unfiltered passion; Jenseitsritt is an album you quite literally FEEL. Maybe it’s an increasingly accurate reflection of their wild, sweat-soaked live show, or maybe it’s all those years spent away from the full-length front, but the electricity coursing through them carries a potent amount of urgency, and their melodies bend and break and rebuild in suitably breathless fashion. And yet…Jenseitsritt almost feels…relaxing in its poetic flow. One of the most unassumingly unique bands around have gotten even better: MIDNIGHT PREY return with impossible splendor and unbridled fervor!
