Black Breath are currently one of the best bands in the genre of hateful, atheistic music. A mix of D-beat rhythms and filthy metal riffs, the Seattle-based fivesome have released a pair of blistering full-lengths during their short history together (2010’s Heavy Breathing and 2012’s Sentenced to Life), and they’ve been prepping the new Kurt Ballou-produced assault for a while—the leg surgery drummer Jamie Byrum had to undergo when he was hit by a car last year likely didn’t help in expediting the album. Still, Slaves Beyond Death is due out on September 25 via Southern Lord and the album’s title track—which will also act as today’s 12 O’Clock Track—was dropped a couple weeks back as a teaser. And if the five-minute-plus funnel cloud of bile-filled vocals, shifting and rumbling rhythms, and on-fire tremolo picking don’t act as good enough indicators for how devastating this album is bound to be, then maybe just focus on Neil McAdams’s lyrics, which mostly allude to the torture and fiery hell one will have to endure in life after death (“I drag your soul . . .”). Good, clean fun, guys. The track isn’t as straightforward as the rest of the Black Breath catalog—and it certainly has some sudden, stop-on-a-dime changes in rhythm and focus—but is still smokes when it counts. And McAdams sounds more demonic than ever.
SLaves Beyond Death by Black Breath
