It’s been an absolute pleasure to watch the growth and evolution of Intronaut since Kip Wingerschmidt first brought them to our attention with their 2006 album Void and 2007’s Challenger EP. Since then we’ve written about these Californians a whopping 376 times (now 377!) and watched them grow from young, promising up-and-comers to one of the best bands making metal today.

The Direction of LastThings, out November 13th via Century Media, will be their fifth studio album. Will it be their best yet? The jury is still out on that one, but judging by “Fast Worms,” which MetalSucks is premiering today, it’s looking damn likely.

You will notice immediately upon pressing play that this is the best sounding Intronaut music to date. Ironic, then, that the band spent just FOUR DAYS recording the album with producer/engineer Josh Newell, instead of the lengthy recording journeys they’ve embarked upon in the past. Says guitarist Sacha Dunable:

We decided that we don’t need to spend three weeks in a studio obsessing over every minute nuance. The reality is that in that past, we’ve taken that approach, but then we go on tour and play all those songs tightly. So why not just write the songs, rehearse the hell out of them, and then just go play them in an awesome recording studio? Intronaut is an actual band who rehearses together regularly. We make up one collective musical brain. There’s no reason why we couldn’t just have someone set up some mics, hit record, and capture that. We ended up making our best sounding record in a third of the time.

Intronaut redirected all the money they saved by not obsessing over tom sounds towards their mix budget, bringing in metal supergenius Devin Townsend to massage their deft performances into one massive, clear, powerful-sounding whole. Having heard just one track we’re completely confident in saying that The Last Direction of Things is by far the highest quality Intronaut recording to date.

The music, of course, speaks for itself. These four men have evolved into masters — that they were able to pound out such complex music in FOUR FUCKING DAYS is testament to that — and their style can now be described as distinctly Intronaut. They sound like no one else, and no one else sounds like them.

The Direction of Last Things comes out on November 13th, with pre-orders opening up on October 2nd. Stream “Fast Worms” below. Here’s the track listing:

Fast Worms Digital Gerrymandering The Pleasant Surprise The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing Sul Ponticello The Direction of Last Things City Hymnal Valley of Smoke (Remix)*

*LP ONLY BONUS TRACK