PHOTO: Suren Karapetyan

Whether Scandinavia likes it or not, the United States is now home to more black metal bands than the genre’s birthplace. Of course, living up to its home’s reputation as a melting pot, the American stuff is often influenced by a wide range of heavy metal styles, including death, thrash, crust, or sludge, to name a few. And corpsepaint is often circumvented for a look that’s a bit more au naturel.

Brooklyn, New York’s Mutilation Rites are no exception to the above generalizations, and have proven — over the course of two exceptional records oozing with wretched, savage non-black metal influences — to be one of the most dangerous and exciting “black metal” bands in the country.

Naturally, Kerrang! is thrilled to premiere the first new music from Mutilation Rites’ first album in four years, the highly anticipated Chasm.