IT’S MIDNIGHT

“The bullet grazed me.”

We’re sitting in Jamie Walters’ backyard in suburban Cleveland. It’s the same neighborhood he grew up in. Across the street: the house where his childhood friend tried to shoot him.

It was 1984. Miami Vice was popular. Walters’ friend—who also still lives in the neighborhood— called him upstairs. “When I walked up, he pulled his parents’ gun out of the dresser, loaded, and says, 'Freeze! Miami Vice!’ The bullet grazed my arm, and it’s still in the archway of the door. But I survived, a real trouper at 11 years old.”

If you know anything about Walters’ band, Midnight, it’s probably this: (1) They sound like the unholy union of Motorhead and Venom, high on loose women, exotic powders, and whatever else they can get their hands on; and (2) lyrically, they lean heavily into sleaze and, like, Satan. Songs like “Endless Slut,” “Penetratal Ecstasy,” and “All Hail Hell” tell the tale. They slash and burn before slashing and burning again.

For 20 years, Midnight have delivered these blitzkriegs at an astonishing rate. With a discography that includes four albums alongside countless EPs, singles, compilations, and live sets, Midnight have dropped a release—if not multiple releases—nearly every year of their existence. On these, Walters writes all the music and lyrics (minus cover songs) and plays every instrument. Live, he plays bass and handles vocals. He wears a face-obscuring black hood, a black leather jacket, a bullet belt, and motorcycle boots. He’s joined on stage by guitarist Shaun “Commander Vanik” Vanek (since 2012) and drummer Ryan “Iron Possessor” Steigerwald (since 2022).

“They’re technically great musicians, but they also get the aesthetic,” Walters says of his bandmates.

“They get that it’s early-’80s, stripped-down, raw shit. They’re able to put their egos aside and play the songs instead of showing off their chops.”

Walters performs under the stage name Athenar. It’s a bastardization of “Athena,” a former coworker’s name. They worked together at a Chinese restaurant. Walters started there in 1987. He quit in 2020. “I stopped at the beginning of coronavirus,” he says. “People started to get a little cutthroat because they had mouths to feed. So, I decided to bow out. And I’m glad I did. It’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time.”

When he gets back from tour—lately with metal luminaries like Mayhem, Kreator, and Mercyful Fate— the neighbors might ask about the gigs: “Anything special happen?” “Nothing you wanna know about,” he’ll reply. “Everyone here goes to church on Sunday, so I’m like a novelty to them. I get a lot of, ‘You worship the Dark Lord and promote sodomy, but you’re actually nice! Wow!”’

It’s not all sunshine and butt-fucking, though. He points to a house up the street. “I used to catch the school bus right over there. The son, who was my age, died two years ago. He got addicted to meth, and he died under a bridge. He was a smart kid, but he used his smart powers for evil, even back then. He was always figuring out real clever ways to get into trouble. ”

Walters lives next door to his old babysitter’s house. Which also happens to be the place where he stole his first guitar. “I just took it out of her daughter’s closet,” he says. “She died too. Actually, the mother and daughter died within a couple of weeks of each other. One had a heart problem, the other had a meth problem.”

It’s an idyllic May afternoon. A heron lands in a neighbor’s backyard. A squirrel sits three feet away, staring at us. Walters takes it all in.

“I still have that guitar.”

Walters’ living room doesn’t look like a place where he might live. The Asian decor is the work of his wife, who grew up in China. Everything is delicate and spotless. It looks like the waiting room at a high-end acupuncture clinic, not a place where Cleveland’s most notorious metal maniac writes songs with names like “Aggressive Crucifixion” (from 2014’s No Mercy for Mayhem), “Bitch Mongrel” (from 2017’s Sweet Death and Ecstasy), and “Szex Witchery” (from 2022’s Let There Be Witchery).

Athenar’s lair is in the basement, of course. In a room covered with ’80s metal picture discs, his extensive vinyl and CD collection lines the walls. Two easy chairs face a big-screen TV. Back in the unfinished part is where he records Midnight demos to four-track cassette. It’s also where he keeps his extensive collection of music DVDs and VHS tapes, including several selections from KISS, Motorhead, and Alice Cooper. Carnival mirrors emblazoned with the images of Priest, Maiden, and Crtie form a shrine around his recording setup.

The day we meet with him, Walters is wearing a faded Slayer South of Heaven T-shirt. He bought it in 1988 when he saw them play at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland. “I still have tons of shit from back then, and most of it still fits,” he says. “I try to keep svelte, but I also bought them a size or so big because I was thinking ahead. I figured I’d grow up one day.”

The same year he stole the guitar, Walters got a bass for Christmas. His mom wanted him to take lessons. He lasted about four months. “It was mostly just going through Mel Bay [chord] books, but then you could bring in records and he’d show you how to play the song you wanted. I’d bring in KISS or Led Zeppelin—that was the part you looked forward to. After that, I didn’t need lessons anymore.”

He formed his first band almost immediately. His friend Terry “The Chan” Hanchin played guitar. Another kid at school played drums. They were called Atomic Fear, a moniker nicked from a line in Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave.” They played their first gig at another house down the street, opening for Black Ax, the heavy metal heroes of the neighborhood. (Midnight would later cover the Black Ax song “T.A.P.” on their 2011 album, Satanic Royalty.) They played part of Sabbath’s “The Wizard,” part of Metallica’s “Jump in the Fire,” and two originals. “But the originals didn’t have vocals,” Walters explains. “They were basically just riffs we had.”

Two more short-lived bands later, Walters and Hanchin formed Boulder. They were seniors in high school. Boulder put out three albums over the next decade or so before going tits up on their first tour. “We could never get on the same page,” Walters laments. “But I always slugged it out because that’s what I wanted to do.”

For Walters, the end of Boulder was as frustrating as it was transformative. He recorded the first Midnight songs in 2003, not long before Boulder officially broke up. “I decided I didn’t want a band,” he says. “I was done investing time with people who didn’t wanna do it. That sparked the reason for doing everything myself. It was much more satisfying.”

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

Midnight’s debut, the seven-song Funeral Bell EP, came out in 2003. It was released by Outlaw Recordings, the label run by Walters’ friend and wellknown metal enthusiast Omid Yamini. “I’d put out stuff for Boulder, so when Jamie came out of the basement with the Midnight demo, it was a no-brainer that we’d release it on Outlaw,” Yamini says. “Jamie and I were good friends, and the label was all about doing cool stuff with friends. Musically, it was catchy verse/chorus metal with simple, easy-to-remember song structures and choruses, so we just figured, ‘Hey, let’s make 113 of these and see if anyone cares!’ Who’d have thought Midnight would still be going 20 years later?”

Pressed to vinyl in an edition of 113, with 30 of those packaged in custom leather sleeves handmade by Walters’ mom, the record is a highly sought-after collectible today. “The plan was to just make one record and play one gig,” Walters explains. “It didn’t happen that way.”

The first Midnight show took place on Halloween 2003. Walters assembled a band, which he dissolved immediately afterward. “I just sat on the whole thing for a while,” he says. “I wasn’t really interested in playing live gigs. Then I got the idea of doing the solo band.”

The solo band was essentially glorified karaoke. Walters would do the vocals and play lead guitar to a burned CD with backing tracks. “Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t,” he recalls. “The CD would skip sometimes. So then I put the backing tracks on a cassette through my four-track, but that sounded even worse. Something was always fucked.”

Walters estimates that he did about 12 to 15 solo Midnight gigs between 2004 and 2006. To his surprise, the songs began catching on. He played local shows in Cleveland, but he also went to New York, Indiana, and Canada. “To me, those gigs were better than Boulder gigs because there were people already into it,” he says. “With Boulder, I thought the band was good, but nobody knew the music. With Midnight stuff, people already had the record, and they were excited. It was cool going places and having people know the songs already.”

By 2011, Midnight had a dozen releases out but no full-length albums. “I was just doing things at my own pace,” Walters says. “The reason I did singles and EPs is because I’m a New Wave of British Heavy Metal fan. I was afraid that once I put out an album,

it’d suck—because that’s how so many of those bands were. The singles would rule, and the albums were like ugh.”

His attitude changed after Midnight played a festival in Canada. Walters was approached by a local hustler who said he was starting a label, had a studio, and wanted Midnight to record a full album. “I told him I didn’t wanna record a full album, but he actually got me thinking about it,” Walters says. “So that week I wrote all the tunes for Satanic Royalty. I just didn’t put them out with him.”

Featuring two of Midnight’s most popular (and catchiest) songs in the title track and “You Can’t Stop Steel,” Satanic Royalty solidified the band’s reputation as devil-dealing sleazemongers of the highest order. Released by the Ohio-based, diehards-only metal emporium Hells Headbangers, the album remains an all-killer, no-filler linchpin of Midnight’s riff-roaring catalog. “I always feel like Satanic Royalty is the third album because there’s two albums’ worth of shit before that,” Walters says. “But for tons of people, it’s the first Midnight stuff they heard.”

At this time, Midnight would occasionally do short tours—a week here, 10 days there—but mostly weekends and one-offs. “We’d fly to Finland to play one show or fly to Australia to play two shows,” he says with a laugh. “Just totally ridiculous stuff.”

But this was actually by design. After Boulder had broken up on the road, Walters had developed an aversion to touring. “That probably had something to do with it,” he concedes. “But I was totally fine with not being a regular band. The reason I started Midnight was to not be like every other band. I mean, I could make up so many reasons to not tour. It’s a waste of time; I could be home writing songs instead of playing the same songs over and over.”

In 2016, Walters’ father passed. He realized his own clock was ticking. "It was like Celtic Frost— Visions of Mortality,”’ he says, referencing a track from the Swiss proto-death-metal band’s 1984 debut, Morbid Tales. “It was shit-or-get-off-the-pot time. I was like, ‘What am I doing, sitting around holding onto my ding-dong here? Am I gonna work in a Chinese restaurant for another 30 years?”’

That’s when the 2017 Decibel magazine tour came calling. With a stacked lineup including German thrash kings Kreator, Floridian death dealers Obituary, and Philly up-and-comers Horrendous, it would be a monthlong trip across North America playing huge rooms with the cream of the crop. Decibel editor in chief Albert Mudrian knew what he was doing when he offered Midnight the gig. “At that point, Midnight had never toured beyond the occasional fest appearance or short weekend run, so I knew it would be a new experience for both Midnight and a good percentage of the Decibel tour crowd,” Mudrian tells CREEM. “Also, Midnight fucking rule.”

Walters had turned down long tours before. This time he saw an offer he couldn’t refuse. “There are people who would kill for this kind of opportunity,” he recalls thinking. “I should be grateful someone wants to see my band, but I’m gonna be like, 'Nah, pass’? It wasn’t like I felt I was too cool for school. It was more like, ‘You don’t want me. Get Judas Priest—they’re better!’ But then I figured this is what I’m here for.”

The tour was a major turning point for Midnight— and Walters personally. “It was huge,” he confirms. “I always felt like playing stages like that was for professionals. A little while before we left, my dad had died, and I didn’t feel good—my mind didn’t feel good, and my body didn’t feel good. But then we did 20-something shows and I didn’t freak out. I was waiting for a big tidal wave to come in and crush us, but it never happened. It was a good feeling of inspiration to try something new.”

The Decibel tour opened the floodgates. In 2019, Midnight toured with Norwegian black metal legend Abbath (along with Obituary again). In early 2022, they toured with Mayhem, the originators of Norwegian black metal. Later that year, they toured with Mercyful Fate, one of the most revered and unique heavy metal bands of all time, and—moving up the ladder here—one of the bands that inspired black metal in the first place.

“Once you get out there, you realize there is a certain something,” Walters says of touring. “There is inspiration when you get out and see different places. You get inspired to make something new. It took me a while to realize that.”

TURN UP THE VOMIT

“This house has a legacy.”

Jamie Walters is in full regalia: black hood, black leather jacket, bullet belt, motorcycle boots. He’s holding an upside-down cross. It’s on fire. The image has become a famous one in Midnight lore. It’s on the back cover of Satanic Royalty. Walters and CREEM are now standing in the exact spot where it was taken. We’re in the backyard of the notorious “Miles Road House,” where Walters used to live. A friend of his still lives there—along with some random items Walters left behind.

“I moved in here on January 1st, 1999, and kept my belongings here until at least 2013 or 2014,” he explains. “I recorded all the demos and stuff here, and we had band practice in the basement.”

Down in that basement, there’s still a Midnight set list tacked to the wall. There’s a dusty collection of Star Wars memorabilia above the washer and dryer. This is just some of the detritus that Walters left behind. “There used to be a lot more Star Wars stuff,” he says. “I had all the ’70s shit here, but I sold it all.”

There’s a Celtic Frost mug he made in ninth-grade silk-screening class. There’s an unopened lemonlime Gatorade in the old-school glass bottle, 99-cent price tag still attached. “That was Little Richard’s Gatorade,” Walters explains. “He was doing a gig at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in ’97, and he had two bottles of Gatorade by his piano. He took the one he was drinking, but I snatched the other one when he left.”

The Miles Road House is where the Midnight Mistresses frequently got drunk and naked. If you’ve seen photos from early Midnight gigs or the gatefold of the first pressing of the Complete and Total Fucking Midnight compilation, you’re familiar with the Mistresses. Back in the early aughts, they would appear on stage with Walters in various states of inebriation and undress. Sometimes they’d throw up.

“One of them was my girlfriend at the time, and the other was her friend,” Walters explains. "The girlfriend moved in with me here, and we were just partying like you do when you’re young. I still wasn’t drinking at the time, but they would get wasted and take debaucherous pictures and do stupid shit.”

Some of those pictures are in the aforementioned gatefold. “The one where I’m getting thrown up on, that was taken right here in the living room,” he says. “There was lots of peeing and stuff. Not on the floor, but in the tub upstairs. Lots of pee and vomit.”

Stories of the Mistresses are legendary. Walters recalls a time when they chugged an entire bottle of vodka before the show. “By the time we went on, they literally couldn’t stand,” he says. “There’s a photo of that in the gatefold, too—they’re leaning against me, titties out. Maybe two or three songs in, they both fall and break my guitar. Show over. But people loved it: ‘Some guy playing over a CD with two drunken sluts. Great!”’

At Sneaky Dee’s in Toronto, Walters decided to haul out the inverted cross. He asked one of the Mistresses to soak it down with lighter fluid before the show. “When I lit it, it went straight up,” he says. “It was way more intense than I was expecting. It was really crowded, and we were on the second floor. That was not a good decision on my part.”

Later that afternoon, we hit No Class, the Cleveland punk/metal venue formerly known as Now That’s Class. There are Midnight posters all over the place. One is signed by Walters: “No Class, keep it classless! —Athenar 666.” The new owner, Emma Jochum, runs the extreme metal shop Black Market Records out of the basement. She’s got a Midnight tattoo on the back of her neck. “Can you tell I’m their biggest fan?” she asks.

Two decades into Midnight’s unlikely existence, Walters continues to write at a frantic pace. He’s put out two Midnight albums in the past three years, and he’s got two more in the can. The first was written around the same time as 2022’s Let There Be Witchery and should be out in early 2024. “I wrote it in a weekend,” he says. “It’s a total caveman, Discharge-style, zero-percent-fat record. I’m pretty happy with it.”

The second one he’s more tight-lipped about, but all signs point to something elaborate. “As far as I know, it hasn’t been done before,” he says. “I don’t wanna talk about it because by the time it comes out, someone might steal the idea. But it’s my interpretation of Physical Graffiti or Exile on Main Street. For Midnight, it’s pretty grandiose. But it’s still in the gutter.”

Obviously, there’s no shortage of material. Twenty more years of Midnight is totally realistic. “I always have ideas,” Walters says. “But when I look at people like Neil Young, who’s still cranking out good stuff at almost 80 years old, I’m not like that. But I’ve got a lot of stuff in the can right now. If I don’t write another song until 2030, I’ll be good.”