{"id":268860,"date":"2025-11-08T00:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268860\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T00:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:20:08","slug":"heavy-song-of-the-week-tailgunners-midnight-blitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268860\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavy Song of the Week: Tailgunner’s “Midnight Blitz”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heavy Song of the Week<\/a> is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight Tailgunner\u2019s \u201cMidnight Blitz.\u201d<\/p>\n

NWOBHM revivalists Tailgunner are in top form on \u201cMidnight Blitz,\u201d the title track and opener from their forthcoming 2026 album.<\/p>\n

One of the strongest traditional metal cuts we\u2019ve heard all year, it checks all the boxes for premium throwback metal: surging power metal energy in the \u201980s vein, tasteful lead work from guitarists Rhea Thompson and Zach Salvini, plus melodic high-register vocals from Craig Cairns.<\/p>\n

There might have been some added adrenaline in the studio considering former Priest axeman K.K. Downing was behind the board, serving as producer for the album sessions.<\/p>\n

Downing was so impressed by Tailgunner when the upstart British act opened for a recent KK\u2019s Priest tour, he took the band under his wing. That\u2019s a mighty endorsement from heavy metal royalty, and Tailgunner rise to meet the expectations that come with a production credit as esteemed as Downing\u2019s. He only helped invent heavy metal as we know it. Here, he passes the proverbial torch.<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are loud and proud, and totally descended from everyone in metal that has gone before \u2013 their energy and rawness, together with their brand of metal, incorporates all of the godfathers and much more,\u201d enthused Downing in a press release. \u201cMaiden, Priest, Mot\u00f6rhead, Def Leppard \u2014 the list is endless. The band has a youthful freshness and a uniqueness that will no doubt elevate them to being a true metal favorite of the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Honorable Mentions:<\/p>\n

Evergrey \u2013 \u201cOXYGEN!\u201d<\/p>\n

The start of \u201cOXYGEN!\u201d is supremely heavy, begging the question: Is this Evergrey\u2019s foray into death doom metal? Then the synths come in, as the band settles into its more familiar blends of gothic prog metal, highlighted by the soaring emotive vocals of Tom S. Englund. There is a heavy underbelly of riffing throughout, so the intro isn\u2019t a total 180.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mayhem \u2013 \u201cWeep for Nothing\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayhem<\/a>\u2019s legacy tends to overshadow their more recent triumphs, such as the excellence of 2019\u2019s Daemon. This is a band that\u2019s still in search of progression in its sound, and while we\u2019re referring to the concept of progression rather than progressive in the musical sense, there is some prog on \u201cWeep for Nothing,\u201d the lead single from Mayhem\u2019s freshly announced LP Liturgy of Death. The variation in the arrangement \u2014 from fast blasts to doomy, haunted arpeggio riffs and even winding prog \u2014 is delightful in its rigorous grandiosity. Likewise, frontman Attila Csihar exercises his many voices to match the shifting moods, moving between harsh rasps and operatic eloquence.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nothing \u2013 \u201cCannibal World\u201d<\/p>\n

Philly shoegazers Nothing<\/a> add a little \u201990s techno to their sound on \u201cCannibal World,\u201d taking a page out of Slowdive\u2019s book when the latter released the electronic-tinged 5 EP over 20 years ago. Nothing\u2019s take on techno shoegaze is less ambient however, driven by breakbeat-esque percussion and laced with spikes of feedback. It\u2019s still too melodic to be an industrial raver, but it ain\u2019t far off.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-268860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}