We recently caught up with the amazing Athenar, the guitarist, bassist and drummer behind Cleveland’s sleaziest and trashiest one man band, Midnight. Athenar took some time from his morning routine to discuss his upcoming album, “Let there be Witchery”, record collecting and combining tofu and peanut butter.
Trve Kvlt Coffee: What are you up to this morning?
Athenar: This morning? Just the usual. Conducting brain surgery, doing a little bit of star gazing. The typical stuff I do in the morning. Besides that just making coffee and eating oatmeal.
TKC: I usually need a couple cups of coffee before I think of any type of brain surgery.
Athenar: (laughs) Not me man. I dove right into the brain surgery and worry about the coffee later.
TKC: I feel it gives me more of a steady hand.
Athenar: True
TKC: Now you do have an upcoming show on February 12th at Photo City Music Hall. That looks like a pretty cool venue.
Athenar: Yeah, I went there for the first time in October, I went to see Nuclear Assault and it was really cool. I know the guy that sets up the gigs and he asked if we wanted to play there and I said, “Hell Yeah!” They started right before Corona doing a winter bash in Rochester. This is, I think, the second one, “Rotting in Rochester.”
TKC: After that, you have an upcoming tour with Mayhem and Watain.
Athenar: Yup. That’ll be our first tour since Corona. We’ve played a little mishmash of gigs in ’21 but this’ll be our first tour since 2019.
TKC: That’s a pretty good lineup to be touring with too.
Athenar: Yeah. At this point I’ll tour with Cindy Lauper and Huey Lewis.
TKC: (Laughs) I would love to see Midnight open for Cindy Lauper! How does it feel to be hitting the road again?
Athenar: Like I said, we’re not there yet. I won’t believe it until we are actually in the van and in the venues because the rug has been pulled out from underneath us and everybody else before so we’ll see. Still a couple weeks (for possible) disappointment.
TKC: Let’s hope for some good news, I think things are looking a lot better than they did before. I’m in the Cincinnati area and we were hoping to see you play here as a part of Transplant Fest in in 2020. I was so excited for that show, that was my one gleaming hope for 2020 that a show might actually go on. I thought maybe it still has a chance, Cleveland isn’t too far…
Athenar: Womp Wahhhh. (Laughs) Cincinnati. Fucking Bengals, alright!
TKC:That’s all you see in Cincinnati right now. That’s all that’s going on.
Athenar: I’m sure.
TKC: Do you have an additional tours or festivals planned for this year?
Athenar: Well yeah, there’s a shit ton planned just like there was in 2020 when the last album came out. This one’s about to come out, the new album and there are US tours and European festivals, going to Mexico, that’ll be our first time going to Mexico. There is a fall tour, so there is definitely stuff planned but like I said, we’ll see what happens.
TKC: I hope it happens and I hope we get something in my area.
Athenar: Yeah, I’d love to come down there. I used to come down there all the time in Cincinnati. There’s a record seller guy there. We used to make trips all the time to buy records.
TKC: Oh, any certain record store?
Athenar: No it wasn’t a store. He just sold them out of his basement. He mainly sold NWOBHM singles and shit like that. I can remember that exact name of the town but it was just right outside of Cincinnati. Damn. I can’t remember.
TKC: It’ll hit you in the middle of the day and you’ll remember. I did actually catch you guys at Psycho Fest which was an awesome show!
Athenar: Yeah in Vegas. That was our first show back after Corona.
TKC: You guys were on fire!
Athenar: Yeah it was cool. It felt good and natural to get back out there and play tunes again. I did not expect to be playing in an arena, that’s for sure. That was a bit bizarre.
TKC: Definitely a cool festival. It was my first time and hopefully I’ll make it out again.
Athenar: Yeah that was good. Danzig was good, Repulsion was good.
TKC: I missed Repulsion because it was the last performance and (The House of Blues) was so crowded, I didn’t think I would make it. Your latest album, “Let there be Witchery”, comes out on March 4th and this is your second with Metal Blade. How does it feel to working with Metal Blade now that this is your sophomore release with them?
Athenar: It’s cool. It’s good they gave us another chance. The first one, we didn’t get a chance to really at all and promote that first one with Metal Blade so if everything goes good here it’s gonna be much mo’ better. They’ve been doing this kind of thing since most of the people that listen to the music have been alive. They know what they’re doing. They are not fly by nighters, they do a good job at what they do.
TKC: Almost everyone’s favorite metal bands have had some kind of brush with Metal Blade at some point in their careers it seems. I am enjoying the re-releases they are doing. I think that’s pretty cool to make them available for people, like myself, who may have discovered Midnight a little later and are having a hard time tracking down some of your earlier material.
Athenar: Yeah. That was part of the reason for them to get involved, so that they could keep the catalog in print and get it overseas more. Where as the previous label (Hell’s Headbangers) they got stuff overseas but it wasn’t as accessible. We are a band of the street and for the street. So we wanna get the music out there. I know it’s easy for people to download and to whatever, get it off the computer. I’m still of the mindset of having an actual record in your hand and playing the record. I would like to think that people can go to the store and buy a record.
TKC: Yeah I’m there with you. I usually go digital for the sake of space or if I can’t find it anywhere else. I’m excited you have stuff coming out on cassette. I’ve listened to the new album and I think it’s fantastic, everything you want with a Midnight record. “Szex Witchery”, “In Sinful Secrecy”, I love “Villainy Wretched Villainy”, which is a great title by the way. I can’t pinpoint a favorite yet, it’s tough. Which song are you particularly excited to unleash upon the world?
Athenar: Oh man. I mean shit, this question my usual answer for it, they are all my babies. Some of them might have a bit of difficulty in life, some of them may excel in life but I can’t choose favorites. But to play live, we are going to start with “Szex Witchery” because it was the first releashed, so we’ll jam that one. I’m sure we’ll get the other ones, “Frothing Foulness”. The drummer seems to like “More Torment”, it’s got that nice plodding drum beat. So maybe we will do that one too.
TKC. Very cool. Speaking of live shows, much like KISS and Alice Cooper, you totally own that sleazy rock star look complete with a crazy and wild show like the one I saw in Vegas. I remember I was looking at some of my photos I took at the show to see if I could use for this interview but I was like, “No, no they are too blurry, they are running around too much.”
Athenar: (Laughs) It’s all the cocaine and blue meth that we do. We do a lotta blue meth.
TKC: Blue meth?
Athenar: Blue Meth. I just started watch Breaking Bad, they have blue meth in there. I’ll try it one of these days.
TKC: (Laughs) Was the look that you have planned from the get go when you decided you were going to start doing live shows?
Athenar: It wasn’t really intended to be a live band, it didn’t really start out that way but there was an intent to at least to take a picture and put it on a record or something like that. The masks were always there. That was the idea because it was so easy to have a look in exactly one second. There was no applying makeup, there was no getting into some sort of space person costume or whatever else. This was like an instant .99 cent look, ya know? Very Cleveland and just as you know, very Ohio in general.
TKC: Yup, the place I work at, we sell a bunch of those hoods.
Athenar: Well, there you go!
TKC: In many of your photos and promos, you are always holding something on fire. In your most recent promo photo, you have a pair of sai on fire.
Athenar: Yeah! I found those at a garage sale for 3 bucks.
TKC: Oh wow! Really?
Athenar: Like I said man, that’s the Cleveland thing. You do with what you have. You find little things and you make do with ’em.
TKC: It’s looks cool as hell. Anything else that you plan on lighting up?
Athenar: I plan on lighting up the crowd man, that’s what we do. (laughs) Who knows? Fire and Heavy Metal go so well together. It’s kinda like tofu and peanut butter. It goes so well.
TKC: I don’t know about the tofu and peanut butter.
Athenar: But there’s always things to light on fire. Who knows? If I ever grow hair I might light my hair on fire like Michael Jackson.
TKC: There you go! That’ll be…something. Going back to records, I’ve seen a video on Youtube where you are going through your record collection. I love the tour of your house. If you are ever looking for a career change you should look into becoming a realtor because you are pretty good at demonstrating appliances.
Athenar: I love it, I look at realtor.com all the time.
TKC: How long have you been collecting music?
Athenar: Since I was a kid probably when I first started getting into this stuff. Probably since I was 10 years old and I’m *cough* *cough* years old now. (laughs) I’m 48 now so about 38 years.
TKC: Do you have any grails or most prized pieces in your collection?
Athenar: There’s all kinds of things. There’s records that are rare and not that good musically. There’s dollar records that will crush you every day. The thing about it, it’s still about the music for me. It always has been, it’s not about finding, “Oh, that’s the rarest record ever, you’ll never see this copy.” But, I’m always looking for the ultimate risk somewhere, the ultimate tune. You never know where you’ll find that. I’m always looking.
TKC: Do you hit up shops when you are on the road?
Athenar: Oh yeah. All the time. When there’s downtime, which there usually is, me and my other buddy Rodney that go out, we’re scouring the place for records. It gets tougher nowadays but you still gotta look. You never know.
TKC: Any favorite shops that you have run across?
Athenar: Over the years some of the best I’ve always thought were…actually we always have fun looking in Rochester speaking of that. They had a place called Heavy Metal Records, Record Archive, House of Guitars. There is a lot of good stuff upstate/western New York. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because it’s a little on the outskirts of New York City. They had the distribution company, I think it was called Important. So there was always a lot of records going around that area. But shit man. That’s the thing about records. You can find a Tyrant 7″ behind the counter somewhere in Cincinnati. You never know, you just need to keep looking.
TKC: That’s always part of my mission when I travel. Where’s the record store?
Athenar: Yeah, it’s always an adventure.
TKC: This interview is for Trve Kvlt Coffee, have you heard of it?
Athenar: Yeah! I have. I wanna say they made Midnight coffee mugs?
TKC: Yes indeed.
Athenar: Alright. I’m not crazy. Mark that off the list.
TKC: You gotta make sure to try some of the coffee sometime!
Athenar: Hell yeah, I’d love to. Send a bag of coffee and a bag of blue meth.
TKC: Well, I do live in Kentucky, I can probably get some next door, it’s like borrowing a cup of sugar. Anything else that you would like to add?
Athenar: I don’t think so. It was nice rapping with you in the morning while conducting brain surgery.
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