Deadguy

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— incoming June 27th via Relapse Records

First, a brief history of Deadguy: the New Jersey quartet of Crispy, Dave Rosenberg, Tim “Pops” Naumann and Tim Singer released an odd, sardonic, absolutely singular 7” called White Meat in 1994. That same year they enlisted guitar player Keith Huckins of groundbreaking NJ band Rorschach and unleashed a refined, even more vicious sound with their 7” Work Ethic. With only these six songs the band was already understood to be a menacing force in the emerging metalcore scene, both live and recorded, but it couldn’t have prepared anyone for what came next.

Their 1995 debut LP Fixation on a Coworker inspired a generation of bands and was inducted into Decibel’s Hall of Fame in 2006. Of course, something this destructive can’t last long. After an ill-fated tour of the U.S. the band fractured in half with Singer and Huckins off to Seattle to form Kiss it Goodbye while Dave, Pops and Crispy enlisted Jim Baglino and Tom Yak, released one more EP and called it a day, making their entire storied existence only three years long.

A 2021 documentary, Killing Music, led to the reconciliation and live shows, but there was more that needed to be done. Geographical hurdles, families and adult life are enough to stifle anyone’s creative output, but over the next few years the band was able to create something, according to drummer Dave Rosenberg, “out of sheer force of will.”

Rosenberg led the charge, learning guitar and writing a mountain of riffs in that time. While he cites influences that range from King Crimson to Testament, Rosenberg admits that there is something that happens when these riffs reach the rest of the band. “What Crispy (guitar) has always said is that this is just what it sounds like when we play together.”

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.