Infamous metalcore pioneers Deadguy mark their triumphant return with monstrous new single “New Best Friend.”
Their long-awaited sophomore LP, titled Near-Death Travel Services, is an inside joke, the band reflecting on touring and playing this kind of music when they’re ostensibly “past their prime.”
Deadguy innately understood how heavy and deranged their follow-up 1995’s debut LP Fixation on a Coworker would need to be, and that’s exactly what they’ve delivered. There are no signs of Near-Death Travel Services being a swansong; no winding down, no taking it easy or resting on their laurels. The band Deadguy was 30 years ago went into hibernation and came back as if no time had passed. How did it happen? How were they able to pull it off? Maybe some egghead professor of musicology can figure that out, but for the rest of us it’s best to just gratefully sit back and enjoy the massacre.
From the first enraged scream that ignites the album, this is the kind of merciless chaos that’s been gone far too long. The record is overflowing with angular riffs, clashing guitars, fractured rhythms and gutter bass that no one does better, but with even more red meat and gristle. Instead of moving away from their sound Deadguy have dug in deeper, expanding their songs and giving Tim Singer more room to again show why he’s been one of the best vocalists in extreme music since the first Bush administration.
A brief history of Deadguy: the New Jersey quartet of Crispy, Dave Rosenberg, Tim “Pops” Naumann and Tim Singer released an odd, sardonic, absolutely singular 7” called White Meat in 1994. That same year they enlisted guitar player Keith Huckins of groundbreaking NJ band Rorschach and unleashed a refined, even more vicious sound with their 7” Work Ethic. With only these six songs the band was already understood to be a menacing force in the emerging metalcore scene, both live and recorded, but it couldn’t have prepared anyone for what came next.
