Imagine if the personnel from some of death metal's highest-esteemed albums decided to forget about all the groundbreaking technical stuff for a second and just hang out and riff out???

Thanks to Ralph Santolla, Steve DiGiorgio, Tony Laureano, Kyle Thomas, and Matt Brunsun, we no longer have to.

The aforementioned members have come together to form Devil's Highway, a band that - according to their own press release - aims to sound like "a mixture of classic metal and hard rock with nods to Black Sabbath, Alice in Chains, vintage Scorpions, and early Ozzy Osbourne."??

When taken as a whole, it's really quite staggering how important the line-up has been to the genre's history.

They've played on classics like Death's Human and Individual Thought Patterns and Nile's In Their Darkened Shrines, filled the ranks of Deicide and Obituary, and Brunsun and Thomas have played for Groove Metal legends Crowbar and Exhorder respectively.

Devil's Highway was formed after Santolla played some demos he was working on for Thomas when their two bands (Obituary and Alabama Thunderpussy) were touring together. He said of the project: " This debut has certainly been a long time coming. Steve and I have been planning to do a record together for ages.

I couldn't get psyched unless there was a world-class singer involved and then I met [Kyle], so that was that. We all have an awesome musical and personal chemistry, and the songs, arrangements and playing are very strong.

I think a lot of people are really gonna love this. Plus, the artwork is bitchin'."

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?Watch the bad-ass rattlesnake-and-cactus-themed teaser below.