After Deadguy pulled a Lazarus, the infamous metalcore pioneers reunited on stage to prove that a few decades of dust couldn’t keep them from tearing into audiences like old times. But there’s a big difference between playing the classics for nostalgic fans and risking your legacy with a new album.
The band innately understood how heavy and deranged a follow-up would need to be – and that’s exactly what they bring with their new LP— Near-Death Travel Services— out today on Relapse Records [order].
Even though the band’s high standards led to a culling that left them with only the best tracks, they decided to get the opinion of a former co-conspirator. Enter Steve Evetts, the man behind the board during Fixation. Evetts knows what Deadguy should sound like, and by asking him to produce this new one they felt confident he’d keep the band from softening up or veering too far from what makes them so distinct.
Recorded in fits and starts over a matter of months, 11 songs made the cut to be mixed, mastered and aimed indiscriminately at an unsuspecting public under the banner of Near-Death Travel Services. Members, at once skeptical, were finally able to take in the whole thing and had the same opinion after digesting their creation: “We made a fucking Deadguy record.”
From the first enraged scream that ignites first single / album opener “Kill Fee,” this is the kind of merciless chaos that’s been gone far too long. The record is overflowing with angular riffs, clashing guitars, fractured rhythms and gutter bass that no one does better, but with even more red meat and gristle. Instead of moving away from their sound they’ve dug in deeper, expanding their songs and giving Tim Singer more room to again show why he’s been one of the best vocalists in extreme music since the first Bush administration.
Near-Death Travel Services is an inside joke, the band reflecting on touring and playing this music when they’re ostensibly past their prime. But there are no signs of this being a swansong; no winding down, no taking it easy or resting on their laurels. The band Deadguy was 30 years ago went into hibernation and came back as if no time had passed. How did it happen? How were they able to pull it off? Maybe some egghead professor of musicology can figure that out, but for the rest of us it’s best to just gratefully sit back and enjoy the massacre.
See Deadguy live in June and July:
Jul. 11 Amityville, NY — Amityville Music Hall (tix)
Jul. 12 Garwood, NJ — Crossroads (Record Release Show – tix)
Jul. 13 New York, NY — Rough Trade in-store (rsvp)
Aug. 23 Richmond, VA — The Warehouse (tix)
