Some bands tiptoe around their darker impulses. Minute After Midnight kicks the cage open and lets the whole thing out.

The Nashville-born project — the brainchild of Derrick Ryan, sprouted from Music City’s fertile creative soil back in 2016 — has just dropped a new single called “Unleash the Beast,” and yes, it lives up to the name. The track arrives with a slick new lyric video and a clear thesis statement: stop fighting the parts of yourself you’re afraid of.

“At its core, the track represents a shedding of limitation,” Ryan explains. “A willingness to embrace both light and darkness not as opposing forces, but as reflections of the same truth. The parts of ourselves we fear and the ones we eventually become.”

Sonically, “Unleash the Beast” is exactly the kind of cinematic, room-filling moment that has made Minute After Midnight one of the more genre-agnostic acts in modern rock. Pit-inciting riffs and plate-shifting breakdowns slam headfirst into inescapably catchy choruses, with electronic flashes weaving through it all. It’s the sort of song that could just as easily detonate a sweaty club as it could close out a main stage at a festival.

Stream “Unleash the Beast” on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1I2FT3hzoEYgxaIlCMkotA

The single continues a strong run for the band, who signed to Fearless Records in 2025. Last year, MAM dropped the gleefully tortured “Masochist” — a track that made feeling bad feel oh-so-good — and closed out 2025 with a reimagined version of their breakout hit “Ghost,” which has now racked up more than 610,000 streams.

Refusing to be tethered to any single genre lane, Minute After Midnight keeps proving that the most interesting rock right now is the kind that won’t sit still. “Unleash the Beast” is the latest evidence — and arguably the boldest swing yet.

Press play, turn it up, and let the beast out.