“Loud Night started as an outlet for us to write blistering punk songs with shitloads of guitar harmonies that were dumb enough we could play them blind drunk,” drummer Jonah Livingston tells Decibel — and the Richmond, Virginia quartet certainly lives up to that Rachtman-esque one-foot-in-the-gutter-one-fist-in-the-gold moniker/goal (and then some!) on its rousing, swaggering, thrash-tastic debut full-length Mindnumbing Pleasure.
“Kallen, Ben and I had all been in a band together for years” — that would be underground crossover heroes Ramming Speed — “but we wanted to try playing music more influenced by the classic records we had worn out on our turntables,” Livingston continues. “There are albums that as a rock n roll fan you will always go back to — Motorhead, Priest, Thin Lizzy, etcetera — and we wanted to try to write music that would have that kind of re-play value. So we told our long-time heavy metal bud Andy Horn from Battlemaster that we were trying to do a band that sounded like our take on catchy, ripping D-beat. Me and Kallen listen to tons of Disfear and Martyrdod, Ben listens to lots of Goth and Japanese Punk, and Andy is like…steeped in the leather and filth of Venom. He’s a complete heavy metal maniac, the dude showers with aviators on, it’s insane.”
“So the four of us just started slashing away at this stuff in my basement and we couldn’t be happier that we were able to get this first LP out despite the entire fucking world falling apart. Shout out to Bobby at Vinyl Conflict for taking a chance on this given the circumstances. Now we’re just sitting around chewing gunpowder and waiting until it makes sense to hit the road again. This isn’t music you want to practice too much — it’s music that sounds best in a different city every night.”
To celebrate the release of Mindnumbing Pleasure, Livingston kindly curated the following mixtape for readers also perhaps “just sitting around chewing gunpowder” and wondering what it might be like to ride that highway to Hell with these heavy metal marauders…
Paintbox: “Oneside Surprise”
Venom: “Die Hard”
Judgement: “Kick Them Over”
Judas Priest: “Desert Plains”
Tank: LIVE