Death metallers Horrendous are on the cusp of greatness with new album, Idol. The Philadelphia-based quartet — featuring Damian Herring (guitars/vocals), Jamie Knox (drums), Matt Knox (guitars/vocals), Alex Kulick (bass) — have long been on the rise through the release of three albums, the last of which was 2015’s Anareta, which topped Decibel’s Album of the Year (HERE). In fact, Horrendous are no strangers to Decibel, appearing at 2018’s Decibel Metal & Beer Fest, participants in 2017’s Decibel Magazine Tour and contributing a killer track, “Sentenced,” to the Flexi Series (HERE). Horrendous are well-known around Decibel-land, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’re excited to premiere the first track, “Soothsayer,” off Idol, Horrendous’ new album on Season of Mist. As with previous Horrendous output, it’s both something new and something old, recalling the days of Chuck Schuldiner’s experimentation with jazz-like rhythms and progressive rock-like motifs. But Horrendous aren’t simply a band inspired by one of Death’s many transitional phases. The quartet are distinctly their own entity, with turns and surprises not often heard in death metal. “Soothsayer,” as you will hear, follows through on Horrendous’ ability to be musically nimble yet savagely brutal. To wit, check out what the band have to say about “Soothsayer.”

“Before starting the writing process for “Soothsayer,” we had been listening to a lot of King Crimson and I remember wanting to try writing something in the grandiose and rhythmic, multi-layered style of their mid to late ’70s output. I wanted to capture that same sprawling, menacing atmosphere they so frequently achieve. Some experimentation with this idea led to the opening riffs/section of the song. The rhythmic foundation of the intro is slightly off-kilter, giving it a bit of an unsettling/jarring sound, and the multiple layers built on top of it add additional rhythmic and melodic ideas which provide some nice counterpoint to the main riff and help flesh out this section of the song. From there, the song constantly evolves, with spiraling, jagged riffing that shifts from angular tremolo passages into a melodic crescendo, only to return to the initial theme of the song and end. “Soothsayer”‘s lyrics mirror this chaos, describing the intangible yet all too present and influential effects of ideology — how it can become both a sword and shield used to protect antiquated thinking, and how it can in some cases seemingly possess one’s thoughts and actions, leading to violence as a balm to ameliorate one’s fear of social, political, or cultural erasure. In “Soothsayer,” ideology is at once a spirit, a great influencer, a God, a harbinger of destruction, and an epidemic of sorts, the roots of which are lying dormant in all of us. It’s a song about avoiding the teachings, biases, false information and other destructive thinking with which we have been inculcated.”

And with that, Decibel hereby presents the debut stream of “Soothsayer.” Thank us later.

** Horrendous’ new album, Idol, is out September 28th on Season of Mist. Pre-orders on CD and LP are available HERE. Buy now or forever hold your peace.

Idol Tracklist:

1. …Prescience

2. Soothsayer

3. The Idolater

4. Golgothan Tongues

5. Divine Anhedonia

6. Devotion (Blood for Ink)

7. Threnody…

8. Obolus