Album of the year contenders DÅÅTH today unveil their video for “Unwelcome Return.” The track comes by way of the band’s latest full-length (and first new studio output in fourteen years) The Deceivers, released last Friday via Metal Blade Records.
The Deceivers is at once a devastating reminder and giant leap forward that showcases the technical wizardry and brutal intensity that the Atlanta, Georgia-bred band is capable of. Band founder/guitarist Eyal Levi has overseen an overhaul of the lineup, though importantly DÅÅTH still features force-of-nature vocalist Sean Zatorsky, who has fronted the band since 2007. Together they are now joined by Kerim “Krimh” Lechner on drums, Jesse Zuretti on orchestration and guitar, Rafael Trujillo on lead guitar, and David Marvuglio on bass.
“Now DÅÅTH is more orchestrated, more over the top. We have more melodies and they’re beautiful,” Levi says. That’s what The Deceivers is: Monstrously heavy but beautifully orchestrated, blessed with melodies that will haunt anybody fortunate enough to hear it. The nine tracks were produced by Levi, with Andrew Wade doing vocal production, John Douglass engineering, Jens Bogren mixing, and Tony Lindgren mastering.
Guest guitar solos are contributed across numerous tracks by Jeff Loomis (Nevermore, Arch Enemy), Mark Holcomb (Periphery), Dean Lamb (Archspire), Per Nilsson, (Scar Symmetry, Meshuggah), Spiro Dussias (Platonist), and Dan Sugarman (Ice Nine Kills), with renowned video game composer Mick Gordon (Doom Eternal) contributing sound design and synth to “Purified By Vengeance.”
Comments Zuretti on “Unwelcome Return,” “What if Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman were scored by an epic orchestral metal band and not Danny Elfman? You can find out by listening to ‘Unwelcome Return’ – a vigilante track that lives in darkness, punishes offenders, and disappears into the night. It’s the sound of gothic era classical music fused at the lungs with furious vocals, pummeling drums, razor sharp guitar riffs, infernal orchestral composing, and wicked sound design. If someone tried stopping this track from playing, ‘Unwelcome Return’ would eviscerate anything standing in its way.”
Watch DÅÅTH’s “Unwelcome Return” video, directed by Gaui H Pi
DÅÅTH began their journey in 1999 and stayed busy for just over a decade before its 2011 hiatus. In that time, the band released four studio albums — Futility in 2004, The Hinderers in 2007, The Concealers in 2009, and their self-titled LP in 2010. Tours with Slayer, Nile, Cattle Decapitation, Dark Funeral, Cynic, Dragonforce, Goatwhore, Chimaira, Dying Fetus, and Devildriver followed. DÅÅTH also landed a coveted spot on Ozzfest playing before tens of thousands of fans in outdoor amphitheaters across the US, in addition to the infamous and long-running metal tour Summer Slaughter.
After twelve years on hiatus, DÅÅTH found their ideal new home at Metal Blade, signing to the label and wasting no time creating new music, cover songs (Death’s “The Philosopher” and Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live”) and reissuing previous albums. The first new song from the revitalized DÅÅTH, “No Rest No End” (released ahead of the album in February 2023), features guest solos by Spiro Dussias and now-DÅÅTH member Trujillo, who impressed Levi so much while guesting on the track that he was invited to join the band.