If K.K. Downing tells you to stand up and take notice of an up and coming band, who the fuck are you to ignore him?  Tailgunner is that band, and it seems like plenty more people than Downing are hopping on the bandwagon.  Midnight Blitz marks the band’s second full length and their debut for Napalm Records, no small feat indeed, but considering the influences they draw from and the level of execution they achieve, it should be no surprise.  But how much do they carve their own path, versus retreading old ground, and does that even matter in the end?

“TAILGUNNER is a band we should have seen emerge years ago from the UK. They personify everything that is heavy metal. They are loud and proud, and totally descended from everyone in metal that has gone before,” says Downing.  You know, a pretty significant part of the “everyone in metal that has gone before” crowd.  Not only did he champion the British quintet in their relative infancy, he took them on tour with him and K.K.’s Priest, and now he sits behind the producer’s desk for Midnight Blitz.  To have a band form in 2022 and now, a scant three years and change later, to be working with one of the godfathers of heavy metal as we know it is quite the feat.  But Tailgunner certainly have the skills to back all that hype up.  Their entire musical ethos rests on the kind of thrashy riffage, shrieking, soaring vocals, twin-lead melodies and shred guitar solos that made your Priests and your Maidens household names forty years ago.  Given their meteoric rise into the big leagues, no one can deny that Tailgunner can’t pull it all off with style.  Obviously, the big question on the mind, then, would be this: if we already had Priest, Maiden, Diamond Head, Samson, Saxon and what have you, then what do Tailgunner do different enough to have them stand on their own?  Are they simply aping what already works?

We’ve had a lot of philosophical debates about the merits (or lack thereof) of genre/band worship, and you can look for all that discourse in the archives of the site.  I will tell you this of my thoughts in general, and of Tailgunner specifically: I don’t really mind when bands worship at a particular altar.  You want to write songs that sound like Iron Maiden or In Flames or Darkthrone or anyone else?  Fine, but make it good.  Do it well, and I’m on board.  Midnight Blitz achieves this goal, by my metric at least, so I am going to recuse myself from judging them relative to their influences.  If you’re looking for something that is wholly original, Midnight Blitz will leave you disappointed.  If you’re looking for searing guitar work, bombastic energy, killer riffs and catchy, anthemic choruses à la yesteryear, this album was perhaps made for you.  Right off the bat, the heavily “Aces High” coded title track sets the stage with the requisite siren call from vocalist Craig Carns, whose range is exactly what you would expect and hope that it would be throughout the album and matches perfectly with the harmonized melodies from dueling guitarists Zach Salvini and Rhea Thompson.  While it is based on a very particular trope of album openers, it’s really hard to deny the effectiveness of a song like this: I’ve been singing it all day to myself, even before I sat down to write this review. 

The energy of Midnight Blitz never seems to let up, and the best thing I can say about it is that it seems like it’s impossible to keep track of who the stars of the show are; as soon as Carns finishes a soaring run, the guitars begin trading blitzkrieg, fret-burning solos, and then the drums and bass come back in with an earth-shaking return to the main riff.  Oh, who am I kidding: it’s the guitars for me.  The level of absolute wankery on display here has me grinning from ear to ear, whether it’s the thrash riff in “Barren Lands and Seas of Red” or any number of the egregious solos that pepper all ten tracks of Midnight Blitz.  The technical mastery of each member’s instrument is what helps sell this as a thing unto itself, beyond a mere imitation of their forefathers.

With only one ballad “War in Heaven” to break up the pace of the album, perhaps my biggest criticism of Midnight Blitz is that there might be a little too much breakneck energy.  At the end of the day, that’s hardly a complaint at all, and it shows how much Tailgunner have put into this album.  Downing’s production makes the whole package sound both modern and classic, and it manages to fire on every cylinder it possibly can.  If there is a necessity for anyone to carry the NWOBHM torch, Tailgunner have already picked it up and sent it with them into the stratosphere.  Regardless of what you think of their level of originality, you can’t deny that Midnight Blitz is a wall-to-wall good time.

-Ian

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Midnight Blitz is out February 6 on Napalm Records.  For more information on Tailgunner, visit their Facebook page.