Today marks the official release of Ephemeral, the latest long player from technical death metal slayers, Inherit Disease. The album was tracked at Seahorse Sound Studios by Samur Khouja (Condemned, Arkaik, Flesh Consumed) and mixed and mastered by Sasha Borovykh (Epicardiectomy, Cerebral Effusion) at Tsun Tsun Productions.

Check the album out in full over at NewNoiseMagazine.com. The album is also available for purchase here.

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The track comes by way of the band’s forthcoming debut album, Dasein, which will be released on May 20th. Album pre-orders are available here.

Dasein was captured at Humanoise Studios with Mathieu Marcotte (Augury, Humanoid), mixed by Hugues Deslauriers (Augury, Defilementory, Vengeful, etc.), and features guest appearances from current and former members of Spawn Of Possession, Obscura, Inferi, Augury, and Elderoth, as well as artwork by Sam Nelson (Incandescence, Wayfarer, Stoic Dissention).

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“Divergence” can be found on Ephemeral this April 8th. Pre-order the album here.

Inherit Disease commented on the track:

Religion is the great plague of man. Science is the cure through utilization of technology. This is a song [guitarist] Derek [DeRoos] wrote most of. He kept rewriting and throwing out parts on this song because they weren’t hard enough to play. It took forever to finish. It’s all over the place and hard as hell to play!

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What’s the added benefit of a 360 lyric video? As MetalSucks (where the video made its premiere) says, it allows “the viewer/listener to move away from the lyrics and learn more about the band’s new release.” Isn’t that exciting?

The track comes by way of the band’s forthcoming debut, Solipsist, which will be released on April 15th. Solipsist can be pre-ordered here.

What do you think about the 360-degree idea for lyric videos?

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The track hails from the band’s latest full-length, Lucid Dawn, which was released last year and can be ordered here.

Vocalist Jared Christianson stated about the track:

This track is all about the groove and raw heaviness. It’s straightforward and to the point, which is pretty different from previous stuff we’ve written, but it serves it’s place within the album and adds variety between songs on Lucid Dawn. The song is basically about overcoming fear and the video kind of alludes to the concept of the album, but from an alternative perspective. It was produced and directed by Nikko Deluna. We had a great time making it. We actually ended up filming on the same day/night as the fourth and final ‘blood moon’ total lunar eclipse of 2015, an obviously metal coincidence. Nikko was really professional and a blast to work with!

As we’ve said in previous posts about Arkaik and Lucid Dawn, the album centers itself around Cyrix, a disillusioned character in a dystopian society. In Cyrix’ realm, dreaming is systematically controlled by a tyrannical ruler named Khaal-Li-Phar and his army of dark shamans, where people are forced to build monuments to the tyrant to stifle their imaginations and inhibit their ability to achieve a multi-dimensional existence.

Musically and conceptually, Lucid Dawn is a death metal take on American mythologist, writer, and lecturer, Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and the beginning of Cyrix’ Hero’s Journey that seamlessly carries its listeners on a visceral expedition through the depths of evil and beyond the threshold of mundane reality.

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Check out that album cover! There’s proof that you can judge a book by its cover.

Los Angeles death metal unit, The Zenith Passage (which features within its ranks current and former members of The Faceless, Fallujah, and All Shall Perish), will unleash its long-awaited debut full-length on April 15th, via Unique Leader Records. (You can check out their EP, Cosmic Dissonance, below.) Titled Solipsist, the 10-track offering was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Zack Ohren (Animosity, Suffocation, All Shall Perish) at Castle Ultimate Productions with additional engineering by Zenith Passage guitarist Justin McKinney and Michael Keene (The Faceless) at Keene Machine Studios.

Across 40 minutes of music, The Zenith Passage examines the idea of solipsism, a philosophical theory that the self is all that can be known to exist, anything else outside of one’s own mind is uncertain. The Zenith Passage builds upon this foundation, expanding into themes of nonexistence and a computer-generated fictional reality experienced by all of humanity. Solipsist demands that listeners join the band on their voyage to explore the unsettlingly complex and improbable world they’ve uncovered in this bold experiment, this gut-wrenching visceral transmission of disturbing intellectual revelation.

Solipsist includes a guest vocal appearance by Fallujah’s Alex Hofmann, a guitar solo by Wes Hauch (ex-The Faceless), who also co-wrote a portion of seventh cut, “Hypnagogia,” a synth solo by Vikram Shankar and cover art by Ken Sarafin (Skinless, The Kennedy Veil, Archspire).

Solipsist Track Listing:

1. Holographic Principle I: Emergence
2. Holographic Principle II: Convergence
3. Simulated Reality
4. Deus Deceptor
5. The Dissension Consensus
6. Dreamsphere
7. Hypnagogia
8. Metaphysical Solipsism
9. The Tenebrous Veil
10. Luminary Singularity

About The Zenith Passage:

In early 2012, a small recording collaboration between two friends, Justin McKinney and Greg Hampton, triggered the coalescence of something great. From its modest roots in a stuffy Los Angeles apartment, the music of The Zenith Passage has quickly grown to be anything but humble. Even the earliest demo tracks were a relentless torrent of technical guitar work accompanied by a distinctly frenetic and brutal vocal delivery that has since become an unmistakable mark of the band’s insatiable desire to push their own limits as well as the limits of technical metal. Far from being an aimless shredfest, the music is driven by a thematic backbone that manifests in various aural and conceptual dimensions of the music. Progressive interludes punctuate the pummeling onslaught, invoking a palpable sense of breathtaking dread and reverence for things beyond mortal comprehension. While creating something uniquely their own, The Zenith Passage’s work clearly nods to those who inspired their sound, such as Deeds of Flesh, Decapitated, Spawn of Possession, Severed Savior, and Aeon.

Upon the release of The Zenith Passage’s initial offerings, the unexpectedly positive response of fans across the Internet convinced the duo to redouble their efforts in earnest and to find musicians capable of completing their lineup. This proved no small task, but months of persistent efforts precipitated the addition of drummer Luis Martinez. The subsequent release of a proper EP in January 2013, entitled Cosmic Dissonance, catapulted The Zenith Passage’s recognition to unexpected heights, greatly broadening their fanbase and catching the attention and admiration of some of California’s foremost metal musicians. Not long thereafter, it was announced that Rob Maramonte (ex-Fallujah, ex-All Shall Perish) would step in to lend his talents on guitar. Amidst the swelling tide of the band’s progress, it was only natural that The Zenith Passage follow the way of those who led them down their twisted artistic path: in the summer of 2013, they signed a multi-album deal with Unique Leader Records.

Now, with their debut full-length album, Solipsist, set for release on April 15, 2016, the stage is set for The Zenith Passage to reveal their most impressive statement to date. Rest assured, this marks only the beginning; this is but the first footprint on their path toward the pinnacle, the apex, the Zenith.

The Zenith Passage Is:

Greg Hampton – lead vocals
Rob Maramonte – guitars
Luis Martinez – drums
Justin McKinney – guitars, backing vocals (bass on album)

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The band has also just released the new lyric video for their track, “12 Palms,” which you can watch above.

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Unbreakable Hatred hails from Quebec City and recently signed to Unique Leader. Their forthcoming album, Ruins, contains eight face-melting tracks that were recorded by Chris Donaldson at The Grid Studios (Cryptopsy, Despised Icon, Neuraxis etc.). Ruins will be released on August 21st; pre-orders are available here.

Ruins Track Listing:

1. Addiction
2. Dysfunctional System
3. Natural Disaster
4. Ruins
5. Unpredictable Brutality
6. The Beginning Of The End
7. Luxurious Sickness
8. Primitive Thoughts

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This band hails from Australia, where Kangaroos are more frightening than the flu. “Echoes to Come” leads off the album, but what follows is an astounding amount of intriguing riffs and songs with their own personalities embedded within. Psycroptic push extreme metal to the edge with the hefty amount of influences being enveloped within this entire entourage of tracks, all nine of them. “Ending” is a throw away song at best, but “A Soul Once Lost” exposes how wonderful the band’s riffs are. Consistently, the guitarist, Joe Haley, is flying around the neck of the guitar combining intense leads and interesting legato style riffs.

“Cold” exemplifies how this band can be different among straight extreme metal. The acoustic opening shines light on the different techniques used in setting up the build of exploding drums from such a soothing opening. The entire track is composed of tight drums fills and blastbeats. “Setting the Skies Ablaze” is a recall of ’80s thrash music with the pace of the song never really wanting to take a gasp of air. Sure, the chorus is a bit laid back, but how quickly the track takes off again astonishes me.

“Ideals That Won’t Surrender” mixes black metal with intensity, allowing for a distinct melody to be noticed along with frantic recurring themes. After the song shows the band being melodic, the chug riffs are introduced with decadent drums leading the way. “Sentence of Immortality” is probably the first track that stood out to me on my initial listen. It took seven songs, but the vocals are not expected because they are more of a chant rather than the harsh screams that have been dominant in the previous six tunes. Mix that with Pantera-like riffs and I am hooked.

I guess that is where I am both disappointed and amazed by this album. Before the above track I was just listening to the awe factor of the instrumentals without distinguishing the tracks. Listening from front to back left me with a sequencing of stellar musicianship without a way to explain how to tell them apart. The more I listened, the more each track had a specific motif I could focus on, but at first listen it all blended together.

So, sounding like original NES and that kid, Continuum blasts forth with the technically savvy “A Surreal Descent.” The cup overfloweth with enough blast beats and fret board wizardry to give Harry Potter magic wand envy. Check the track out in the player at the top of the page.

Recorded predominantly by lead guitarist/composer Chase Fraser (Decrepit Birth, Animosity), with additional tracking and mixing by Zack Ohren (Suffocation, Fallujah, All Shall Perish, et al.) at Castle Ultimate Studios, the 10-track The Hypothesis spews forth a scathing assemblage of engaging, abrasive, surgically precise, and unrepentantly violent compositions based conceptually on the mysteries of the infinite and the unsolved theories of the “continuum hypothesis.” This hypothesis was studied by a number of mathematicians, many of whom committed suicide before reaching a conclusion to the unfathomable question of infinity.

A true monolith of progressive technical death metal, The Hypothesis will drop next month via Unique Leader Records.

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