Tech death can be a bit of a hit and miss genre. You have bands like Gorod and Decrepit Birth who know how to write technical death metal that actually has musical merit. And then you have bands like Brain Drill that are pretty much nonstop wank. Yeah, I get it. You can play guitar… but can you write songs?

The Faceless are an extremely talented and progressive-minded band that are at the forefront of this Sumeriancore movement, even after dropping most of what made them -core in the first place. Their first album, Akeldama, was one of my reasons why deathcore isn’t total shit and Planetary Duality, their sophomore effort, saw a jump to full-fledged proggy tech death that was praised by critics and fans alike. Needless to say, not only can The Faceless play their instruments, they can also write some fucking songs, which is exactly what they’re up to right now, The PRP reports.

Here’s what producer and guitarist Michael Keene had to say about the upcoming album:

“After the Summer Slaughter tour wrapped up, we were left with a very refreshing sense of energy and change. It was great to get out and play such killer shows with all of those talented bands and the experience has super charged the excitement of writing new material and pushing ourselves to new musical boundaries as a group and individual musicians/performers.

The writing process for our upcoming third record is in full swing and it’s a very exciting, fulfilling musical journey so far. We’ll be debuting a new song on our upcoming tour with Suffocation, which I feel is a great example of the direction in which the new material is headed. Expect a very progressive and vibey record, that maintains the high-energy that you would expect of THE FACELESS and even more thought provoking lyrical content than ever before.

We’ll be hitting the road in just a few days to wrap-up the touring cycle for Planetary Duality. We’ll be locked up in my recording studio in Los Angeles once we get home. You can expect lots of studio updates and blogs along the way. This will be the last tour we’ll be doing until we complete the recording of our new record. With that said, we want to make this a special tour for fans who may have seen us on the Summer Slaughter tour. Therefore, we’ll be playing more old songs than usual and debuting a brand new song for you! Come and meet us at a merch table and we hope to see you all soon.”

tl;dr: You lucky fucks who can make it out to the Suffocation tour ( WHICH STARTS TODAY!) will be getting the first taste of new The Faceless music.

The Faceless are easily one of my favorite bands and they put on an excellent show this year at Summer Slaughter. It feels much longer than two years since Planetary Duality came out. At any rate, it’s about time! Hopefully they can continue the trend and top their last one!

After the jump, Suffocation (w/ The Faceless, Decrepit Birth, Through The Eyes Of The Dead, Fleshgod Apocalypse) tour dates, just in case you missed it the first time.

- JR

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