Originally formed in Glasgow Scotland, Midnight Force are a band charging forward with their historically infused take of heavy metal! Having members both in Scotland and Germany, the band have been fortunate enough to play many great shows across seas and in now 2023 they busy behind the scenes working on new music.

THENWOTHM: Hey Midnight Force! Can you start by telling our readers where you are from and can you introduce us to the band members?

Brenden: Hi, we originally founded in Glasgow, Scotland, and now we are based between here and the Ruhr Area in Germany (Oberhausen to be precise), myself and Pete make up the rhythm section, Ansgar plays guitar and John handles lead vocals and all the fun jumping around and gesticulating at things.

John: Hello! Three of us, John (vocals), Pete (drums) and Brenden (bass) are from Scotland and Ansgar (guitar) is from Germany – we met at uni and bonded through a love of music, booze and silly YouTube videos. I’m John, and I take my inspiration from the likes of Dio, Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford and Bobby Franklin.

THENWOTHM: How did the band form and is there any insightful story surrounding its formation?

Brenden: Ansgar: John, Pete and I were playing in a Hard Rock/Glam band called Disaster Area. We had all met during our time at Glasgow Uni. This project, however, never really went anywhere apart from plenty of local gigs and the odd show around Scotland. Eventually, our bassist called it quits and Brenden (John’s flatmate and bandmate in Common Gods at the time) joined Disaster Area. We played a couple more gigs under that moniker but then decided to alter the style and name of the band to better represent our changed outlook and ambitions for the band.

John: Disaster Area, was essentially an excuse for me to lark around in the most elaborate clothing I could find in my wardrobe on any given day and for us to play W.A.S.P. covers. Brenden filled in for our then bass player for a couple of gigs, and really fit into the band well so we decided to give it a shot. We all really like classic metal, NWOBHM and what have you so we ended up going in that sort of direction, after covering See You in Hell at a gig in Glasgow which is essentially a rite of passage for any underground metal band.

THENWOTHM: Where did the band name Midnight Force come from?

Ansgar: There is not really any deeper meaning behind it. We basically trawled through Metal Archives and made sure to find a name that has not been taken yet and that perfectly encapsulates our sound. Once we landed on Midnight Force, we all agreed that it’s ideal for what we wanted.

John: We were trying out a few names that sounded more suitable for our genre than Disaster Area, and landed on that essentially. Some of the names we considered actually became song titles – Restless Blade and Crystal Talon, for example!

THE NWOTHM: As a band who would you say your biggest influences have been?
What did you listen to growing up? Have your musical tastes changed?

Brenden: I came into metal music via nwobhm and doom metal, and kinda spread out from there. I try and find music in all sorts of genres to listen to, which is a reason it’s so nice that the music I write and play is the music I started off with.

Ansgar: I saw AC/DC and the Rolling Stones when I was like 9 years old and even though it took a few more years to fully enrapture me, Hard Rock and subsequently Heavy Metal was firmly planted in my brain from then on. I got a bunch of old vinyl from my mum and uncle, which helped me take my first steps into the world of heavy music. I will never forget the first time my uncle played me his vinyls of Rainbow “Rising” or Demon’s “Night of the Demon” – I basically never looked back from there.

John: When I was a kid my parents would put on a wide variety of music, everything from classical to Steely Dan. I discovered metal at age 11 and listened to a lot of it as a teenager. I still love it, but have branched out into plenty other things, namely video game soundtracks and Ludovico Einaudi, as well as the stuff my parents played for me growing up.

THENWOTHM: If you could play with any band or musician, dead or alive who would it be and why?

John: Can I do both? Alice, Metalucifer; dead, Freddie Mercury, Steve Grimmett or Dio.

THENWOTHM:: In your music collections what records would you say are your most prized possessions/favourites?

John: I’m especially fond of a picture vinyl of Black Sabbath’s Headless Cross my fabulous partner got for me, as well as a 7″ single of Zed Yago’s Black Bone Song that came with a free Zed Yago patch.

THENWOTHM: In your opinion what is the Nwothm scene like in Scotland? A couple of bands I have spoken to have said there is not much your way! Would you agree?

Ansgar: It has its ups and downs. I’d say nowadays there’s probably some more interest in classic Heavy Metal than maybe 10 years ago, but the old school metal “scene” is really not much to write home about. There was a New Wave of British Heavy Metal mini-fest (featuring Grim Reaper RIP!), which was something unheard of in Glasgow or Edinburgh and our last pre-Covid show in Glasgow featured 5 Heavy/Power Metal bands and it did incredibly well!

We often shared the stage with bands like Farseer (Power Metal) or Runemaster (Doom Metal), who were NWOTHM-adjacent but have either called it quits or are on hiatus, while some bands like Tantrum or ourselves are among the few active “old school” bands. Like in the original NWOBHM, when Holocaust were one of the few Scottish bands in the “movement”, there aren’t many active Scottish bands, even though – to a certain degree – there is a growing audience for underground old school metal north of the border.

John: As far as NWOTHM bands go, there’s not as many as other places but as a whole there’s a great music scene in Scotland with a lot of fun bands of many genres, metal or otherwise.

THENWOTHM: Touring is a massive part of life for any band or artist! Do you have any interesting stories from being on the road?

Ansgar: Pre-pandemic we indeed tried to play as many 3-4 day mini-tours as possible, so there are too many stories to tell. We usually had a great time, be it enjoying Cretan hospitality, experiencing the super professional organisation of German fests or playing with friends’ bands in Spain or generally getting to visit all sorts of interesting and beautiful places!

THENWOTHM: You have a very distinct musical direction! Can you tell us how you decided your musical direction and what influenced it?

Ansgar: Thank you! I do think we have a pretty distinct sound, if I may say so myself. Our
influences stem – of course – from old school Heavy Metal, with Brenden and me being
particularly fond of more obscure 80s stuff and Doom Metal. We did not set out to become another Maiden or Priest clone, however, and we also did not try and come up with some sort of “innovative” style, all of our songs – up to the pandemic at least – emerged in jams and rehearsals, playing with someone’s initial song or riff ideas until we were all happy with the result. Therefore, I’d say our musical direction emerged naturally and as a collective effort – this is simply what we thought would best express our ideas and vision.

Brenden: I think Pete being in the band, more into AOR than the rest of us, and being able to sing as well, impacted our sound a lot, as he comes up with a lot of harmonies and encourages me to add my own, which fills out the sound a lot.

THENWOTHM: What gives you inspiration for your lyrics?

Ansgar: Books, films, theatre and of course history itself are vital sources of inspiration for me. “Dunsinane” for instance is – of course – inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth to an extent, but also by David Greig’s play “Dunsinane”, which is a sort of sequel to Macbeth and rooted more in the actual historical context of the real-life Macbeth and his contemporaries. This served as a nice point of departure to craft a song about oppression vs. independence in a familiar setting.

John: It’s mainly historical periods we’re fascinated by, or in my own case, I’d been reading a lot about the Flying Dutchman as well as the Golden Age of Piracy around the time I decided to write Over the Phantom Sea. We have a song about Alexander the Great as well, which is of course an essential topic for any good metal band.

Brenden: Whenever I end up going down a wikipedia rabbit hole I normally end up with a good few new inspirations for songs. Long train journeys are really good times too to either read about ideas or mull them over. I find stories that I think are really cool and interesting and I want to share them with people.

THE NWOTHM: History seems to have woven its wave in to your music! Do you each have a favourite historical period?

Ansgar: I think it is almost impossible to pick any “favourites”, though I find myself
reading/listening/watching mostly stuff about ancient Greece, on the one hand, and more modern periods like the Napoleonic Wars or World War I and II on the other.

THENWOTHM: Can you tell is a bit about your discography? Do you each have a favourite release?

John: I’m super keen on a few songs from the new album, which I can’t say much about just now but we’re looking forward to releasing them! I really like the accapella bit near the end of Walls of Acre, and Witchfinder is one of my favourites to perform live.

Ansgar: I am also very much looking forward to finishing the new tracks, some of which are already among my faves to play live. However, it’s almost impossible to choose between our two previous albums Dunsinane and Gododdin – on Dunsinane I was able to contribute some more songs (Scarlet Citadel or the title track being the most significant for me). The core ideas and lyrics on Dunsinane were all written by Brenden and me, whereas Gododdin also featured songs by Pete and John, which – like the upcoming album – makes it maybe more varied and provides a nice overview of our different influences.

THENWOTHM: Can you tell us about your most recent release ‘The Last Raider King?’

John: It’s definitely the closest to our early sound out of the new ones we’ve recorded. Much of the third album is more towards the epic metal side of things, but The Last Raider King is more akin to our earliest, more fast-paced metal like Down with the King, or Killer. We’ve been opening shows with it and people seem to have enjoyed it, and we really reckon it works as a nice, forceful (if you’ll pardon the expression) opener.

Brenden: I wrote it before the pandemic, we were actually going to play it on our German/Dutch gigs that month but, the rehearsal studio we were in only had one microphone so we couldn’t practice the harmonies so we didn’t do it, we played another new song instead. It came about lyrically because I was reading about how Hardrada did much more in his life than just die in Yorkshire, as I’d learned in school ha.

THENWOTHM: Where did the idea for your artworks come from and who created them. There seems to be some historical influence.

John: Dunsinane’s album artwork was drawn by Alasdair of Immortalpict Illustrations, and our friend Calum did the artwork for Gododdin. One or two of the earliest demos were actually drawn by Ansgar or Brenden!

Brenden: Our friend Maria did an amazing job with our Last Raider King artwork as well. But yep I drew the first home demo cover, it got some funny comments about how bad it was but ah well, it was fun to do.

THENWOTHM: How would you say your music has evolved since ‘Crystal Talon?’

John: As we’ve gone on we’ve drawn inspiration from more and more diverse places, as well as other metal bands. We’ve experimented a lot with synthesisers, harmonies and all sorts of other instruments which often results in Brenden pulling long hours to add however many hundreds of tracks to the albums before they’re put out!

Ansgar: Crystal Talon was indeed one of the first songs written for Midnight Force. In the beginning it usually came down to Brenden and/or me bringing song ideas to the studio which we then jammed and worked on until we were all happy with the outcome. Over the years all of us started contributing entire songs or ideas, which resulted in a more varied and – dare I say – unusual sound. As John said, Brenden’s attention to detail has changed a lot since the early days of hammering out the Restless Blade demo in a few days in the university’s recording facilities. Now he goes into a lot of trouble to give the songs additional depth, harmonies and adds the odd instrument here and there. You’d be surprised what (usually actually played and recorded) instruments are hidden in our tracks!

THENWOTHM: What shows have you got coming up for 2023? Will we see any big touring plans for this year?

Ansgar: We have a few shows around Scotland logged in as well as a small weekend “tour” in Germany, playing in Oberhausen (12th May) and Bremen (13th May). We’re easing ourselves back into playing live/coordinating rehearsals between the UK and Germany, so there are no bigger touring plans for now.

THENWOTHM: Where can people check you out on social media and buy your music/merch?

John: We have a Bandcamp, which can be found at https://midnightforce.bandcamp.com – most of our social updates come via Facebook, naturally, but we can also be found on Instagram if you like something visual.

Midnight Force Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/midnightforceEU

THENWOTHM: Is there anything else you would like to mention?

John: Get out there, go to local shows, listen to the music you love, drink as much or as little beer as you like, do whatever makes you happy and buy as many scarves as you want. Don’t let them stop you! Thanks for the interview!

Ansgar: What John said! Support the local scene, don’t waste your money on overpriced has- beens!