It would seem 2014 is putting it’s best foot forward, with a ridiculous number of brilliant death metal releases all coming to light very early on in the year.
The next in line is Alterbeast, a Sacramento based group formerly known as the Gary Busey Amber Alert, signed to Unique Leader Records and are set to drop their debut full length Immortal on the 18th of March. The band recently dropped a new track by the name of ‘Flesh Bound Text‘ and, to be completely honest, I’m still picking pieces of my face out of the speaker cones.
Alterbeast tread that fine line between sheer crushing brutality and genuinely memorable and infectious death metal, conjuring a sound that will probably get them comparisons to both Dying Fetus and The Black Dahlia Murder in equal measure. And not without good reason either, you start to understand when you look at the huge range of people they worked with on this record; the guitars and bass were tracked with previous TBDM bassist Ryan ‘Bart’ Williams, the vocals with Bob Swanson whose résumé includes Rings Of Saturn before it was all wrapped up with drums and mixing/mastering alongside Zack Ohren, who has provided a razor sharp sound for whole collection of bands across the death metal spectrum including Deeds Of Flesh, Brain Drill and Conducting From The Grave.
So, ready yourself for that March 18th release date, I have a feeling this one is going to be pretty memorable.
(Also, that guy on the cover definitely has the Quake symbol carved into his head.)
– DL