Australia’s extreme metal titans Thy Art Is Murder have announced they’ll release their earth-scorching fifth record, Human Target, on July 26 via Human Warfare. The band also released the confronting first single / video of the same name. Pre-order the album here.
Australia’s most brutally alarming cultural export since George Miller’s Mad Max franchise makes music that serves as a loud last gasp against the ever-encroaching void. It’s a blazing light of nihilistic despondency before the final darkness. Fusing authentic crushing death metal with blackened fury and flashes of knuckle-dragging stomp, Thy Art Is Murder exorcise the pangs of mortality and the pains of socio-political trauma.
Privatised prisons enforce police states, where nonviolent offenders languish for decades. Pharmaceuticals numb the mind. Social media distracts the spirit. All while the very planet lurches toward an inevitable climate disaster that will extinguish humanity. ‘The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting?’ That’s not a gruesome song title from some forgotten old-school death metal record. It’s a headline from the Wall Street Journal and also the theme of the first single & title track from the record which explores the practice of organ harvesting in China, where the World Health Organization found a huge discrepancy in the number of organs volunteered by donors and the number of organs transplanted into the wealthy.
Guitarist Andy Marsh explains: “Human Target was the last song written for the album as I felt we lacked an opening track to set the mood and provide the impact for what was to come. Human organ harvesting had been brought to my attention as a serious matter that wasn’t receiving much coverage (or not enough for me to hear about it) and I thought the issue required more scrutiny and awareness. To distill the metaphors of proletariat subjugation down to the visceral injustice of taking away the engines of life, seemed to be a powerful atmosphere to open the record.”
The fifth full-length from Thy Art Is Murder follows the blistering Dear Desolation (2017), which debuted in the ARIA Top 5 – the highest chart debut from a homegrown extreme metal act. They continue along an evolutionary trajectory charted by The Depression Sessions, an unprecedented collaborative album with The Acacia Strain and Fit For An Autopsy. That project arrived after the uncompromising Holy War (2015), Hate (2012), and The Adversary (2010). Across their discography, Thy Art Is Murder have an accumulated 45 million views on Youtube, over 13 million of them for “Reign of Darkness” alone.
Thy Art Is Murder’s thinking-person’s blackened death metal has challenged and inspired audiences around the globe, from top-tier genre festivals like Download, Graspop, Hellfest, and Summer Breeze; to high-profile tours supporting Parkway Drive, Meshuggah, Architects and Killswitch Engage. It has also has earned them a place in the Top 50 Most Popular Metal Bands Right Now, a list compiled by a popular metal blog (based on worldwide page views) that puts Thy Art Is Murder among Metallica, Slipknot, Slayer, Megadeth, Ghost, and Iron Maiden.
Right before Thy Art Is Murder release Human Target, the band will tear down the east coast of Australia for a quick run of headline shows before heading back to Europe. Joining them on the Life In The Crosshairs Tour will be Justice For The Damned, Dealer and Wither.
TRACKLIST
1. Human Target
2. New Gods
3. Death Squad Anthem
4. Make America Hate Again
5. Eternal Suffering
6. Welcome Oblivion
7. Atonement
8. Voyeurs Into Death
9. Eye For An Eye
10. Chemical Christ
TOUR DATES
Thursday July 11th – The Zoo, Brisbane
Friday July 12th – Crowbar, Sydney
Saturday July 13th – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Tickets: oztix.com.au
