New York-based death metal behemoths AFTERBIRTH — featuring within its ranks members of Helmet, Artificial Brain, and Buckshot Facelift — will release their brutalizing The Time Traveler’s Dilemma debut full-length via Unique Leader Records this summer.
Among the earliest purveyors of brutal death metal, AFTERBIRTH was forged on Long Island, New York during the Summer of 1993. The following year, the band released the Psychopathic Embryotomy studio demo which has since become something of a cult-like classic among the extreme metal underground. Due to various issues among its members however, AFTERBIRTH disbanded shortly thereafter the recording.
After a near-twenty-year hiatus however, the band reunited in 2012 and began composing new material for an unknowable future and a then as-yet untitled debut. It became immediately apparent that the creative magic among the AFTERBIRTH members remained — it had never left — resulting in some of their heaviest and most dynamic material to date.
Not only was the music heavier and far more aggressive than it had been during the band’s initial short-lived run, but new elements like progressive metal, space rock, jazz, and noise began to rise to the surface of their song writing. Following a 2014 demo and 2015’s Maggots In Her Smile EP, AFTERBIRTH is set to release their debut with The Time Traveler’s Dilemma, an otherworldly combination of sounds that shift between the discordant and the melodious; the alluring and the disfigured; the eccentric and the methodical.
Heavy, complex guitar work; atypically inspired bass rumblings; skillful, fast, and tastefully groovy drums/percussion; otherworldly growls from beyond known dimensions of time and space… All of this and more combine to form the basis of AFTERBIRTH‘s current musical output. While the subject matter doesn’t stray too far from what some might call “typical” of the death metal genre – murderous grotesqueries, pain, and horrors unimaginable still certainly abound – the band’s vision has expanded far beyond the classic death metal template to include ideas and archetypes found in philosophical, religious, and scientific fiction/horror literature. “Just as our musical prowess had strengthened and amplified over the years,” notes the band, “so had our desires to express ourselves lyrically and conceptually. Gore and mutilated fetuses are always great and rich subject matter but we’ve all branched out and discovered other avenues of knowledge and inspiration we wanted to explore within the framework of the band.”
The Time Traveler’s Dilemma – set for release on July 28th on CD, digital, and vinyl formats — was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Joseph Cincotta at Full Force Studios (Suffocation, Dehumanized, Mortal Decay) and comes sheathed in the cover art of Kishor Haulenbeek (Black Harvest). The vinyl edition was mastered by James Plotkin (OLD, Scorn, Khanate, Khlyst et al). As an extra bonus, Frank Rini (ex-Internal Bleeding) performs backing vocals on the track, “Timeless Formless.”
The Time Traveler’s Dilemma are currently available at THIS LOCATION.
Additionally, you can sample “Maggots In Her Smile” streaming at Unique Leader’s official Bandcamp page at THIS LOCATION.
The Time Traveler’s Dilemma Track Listing:
- Eternal Return
- Maggots In Her Smile
- Drills And Needles
- Discarded Astral Body
- Multiverse Dimentia
- The Time Traveler’s Dilemma I
- Sifting Through The Sands Of The Unholy
- Timeless Formless
- Transcendental Object At The End Of History
- Devouring The Hungry Ghost
- Time Travelers Dilemma II
AFTERBIRTH:
Cody Drasser – guitars
David Case – bass
Keith Harris – drums
Will Smith – vocals
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