Midnight
Sakada

This review is intended as a tribute to one of the most extraordinary singers to emerge from the eighties in the hard-metal scene.

Midnight, whose real name was John Patrick McDonald, died a week ago, on July 8, 2009, due to a suspected liver-kidney collapse. MIDNIGHT was the singer of one of the most original Metal bands of the '80s, but certainly among the most unfortunate and underrated, CRIMSON GLORY. A group that had all the makings of becoming a colossus of American metal music but would forever remain a cult band. Originally from Sarasota (USA), they are authors of at least two classics that deserve to be among the best Metal albums from the United States, namely their self-titled debut in 1986 and the second "Transcendence" in 1988. Proponents of a typically American power metal that incorporated almost progressive elements, famous for the silver masks, which for much of their early career, covered the faces of the band members, completing the darkness and mysticism of their lyrics. The band's third album, "Strange and Beautiful," marked an almost radical change in sound, drawing closer to classic Zeppelin-inspired hard rock. It was a commercial and critical disaster. Midnight left the group and for ten years nothing was heard of him. So much so that legends arose around his disappearance. Crimson Glory reformed in 1999 with another singer, but the magic was gone...

But who was Midnight? He was one of those singers capable of standing alongside the great screamers of the genre and possibly incorporating into his voice the characteristics of the best Dickinson, Tate, Dio, Halford, and Plant. Not bad, I would say. If his beginnings in the original band were characterized by a voice that reached unimaginable heights and his stage presence was very theatrical and striking, over the years he shifted toward a warmer voice, almost reaching his all-time idol Robert Plant.

This album definitively marks the return of Midnight to the scene after a preview "M," an acoustic mini CD from 2001.

Released in 2007, Sakada sees Midnight returning to those Plant-like sounds he wanted to impose on the band back in 1991. So, don't look for Crimson Glory's Metal here because you will be disappointed, but you might discover the true soul of this artist. From the harder and hard rock moments like the initial "Incubus", or "Little Mary Sunshine", "Pain", and "War", psychedelic and bordering on noise at some points.

However, the mystical and oriental aspect of Midnight prevails in "Berber Trails", "Miss Katie", or in the title track "Sakada". Ballads with an almost country and bucolic flavor are instead the acoustic and final "Lost Boy" and the playful "Cat Song" where the word "Pussy" appears here and there.

A commendation also goes to the band that accompanied him and with him wrote all the songs, primarily Scott Gibson and Phil Anderson, and the various guests engaged in unconventional instruments like flute and banjo.

A musically varied album, capable of highlighting Midnight's natural abilities, comfortable in any type of song and certainly promised a stable return of ours to the music business. But something went wrong. At the moment of a possible reunion in the original formation of Crimson Glory, Midnight was arrested for driving a car while intoxicated. No reunion, and perhaps it was just a warning of his weak and troubled character that led him to lose his life at just 47, destroyed by who knows what abuses.