We wouldn’t be surprised to see the Boston Bruins meet the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2022 Stanley Cup Final, and if the team out in the Nevada desert makes it that far for a true battle of black n’ gold supremacy, they’ll have an assist off the ice from a rock and roll band that launched out of New England — Crash Midnight.
The Boston-born, Vegas-based rock dynamo today (October 8) unleash a fiery new track called “Blackout,” and it’ll be featured during Golden Knights home games at T-Mobile Arena. It’s part of another glam-rock blitz from Shaun Soho and the boys, who’ve also unveiled their new “Smash Midnight Blackout” cocktail with downtown Vegas bar Corduroy — a tribute to the whiskey smash they’d often order at Eastern Standard in Kenmore Square — and play with Quiet Riot on New Year’s Eve at Fremont Country Club.
“Blackout” is the third single released by Crash Midnight so far this year, and it was inspired by the band’s Boston days a decade ago before a relocation out to Vegas, re-fueled by the Las Vegas Strip’s blackout last year during Covid.
“[It] was inspired by the sort of recklessness during the early years of the band in Boston,” Soho tells Vanyaland. “We really were in such a ‘live for the moment’ place without maybe considering the consequences of what we were doing at the time. We made a fair amount of trouble for ourselves, but that period fueled a lot of inspiration that we still draw from even being out here in a new city where it’s even easier to find that trouble. When things shut down a little over a year ago, we started going back and looking at all of the stuff that got us here and ‘Blackout’ came together out of that. I had some fragments of lyrics and I’d been waiting for the right place to put them. The swagger and energy of this song pulled it all together.”
And it should reverberate through T-Mobile Arena during Golden Knights games, much like the way the Dropkicks fire up the crowd here at TD Garden.
“We’re really looking forward to hearing ‘Blackout’ blasting at the Golden Knights games this winter,” Soho adds. “Everyone in the band is a huge fan of the team and psyched that they dug the song. The VGK are the first big-time team to come here to Vegas and they’ve become ingrained into the fabric of this city so it’s something we’re proud to be involved with. I want to give [VGK President] George McPhee, Kerry Bubolz, and Andrew Abrams a shoutout for helping make this happen — this team and this organization is pretty tough not to love with the way they support so many things in this city.”
We’ll see where the love lies in the spring when the Stanley Cup is on the line. Fire up “Blackout” below.