The list of bands whose second albums are, contrary to usual practice, even more stripped-down, noisy, and inaccessible than their debuts is not a particularly long one:
the Velvet Underground's
White Light/White Heat,
the Stooges'
Fun House,
the Damned's
Music for Pleasure, and a handful of others. Add
Black Time's
Midnight World to the roster, because the London band's second long-player makes 2005's
Blackout sound as polished and professional as
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Singer and obvious Godard fan Lemmy Caution's hectoring shriek of a voice sounds even more unhinged here, or would if you could actually hear him over the unmixed din of the clanging, partially tuned instruments. The songs are even shorter and more fractured this time out, some little more than half-moaned chants set to arrhythmic drumbeats. However, the intelligence behind the deliberately primitive presentation keeps
Midnight World from being nothing more than a chaotic mess. Fans of the very early
Fall,
Amon Düül,
Crass, and other difficult-listening acts should easily be able to get behind this. ~ Stewart Mason