THROUGH THE EYES OF THE DEAD UNVEIL THEIR “MANIFEST”

I’ve been worried about the fate of Through the Eyes of the Dead for some time now; they’ve gone through a butt load of line-up changes since the release of their last album, 2007’s killer Malice, including the loss of vocalist Nate Johnson, who I personally thought was a vast improvement over his predecessor, Anthony Gunnells.

But now the band finally have a new album coming out, entitled Skepsis, and they’ve unveiled a track, “The Manifest” on their MySpace page. And it turns out I had no reason to be worried at all.

This might the heaviest TTEOTD song I’ve ever heard – but it sacrifices none of the hookiness that made Malice so much goddamn fun. And new vocalist Danny Rodriguez is a more than able replacement for Johnson. (Props to new drummer Michael Ranne and new guitarist Chris Henckle, too – their contributions may not be, at least on the surface, as obvious as those of Rodriguez, but they’re obviously crazy important.)

I also want to make a point of preemptively calling “bullshit” on any douche turd who bitches that this is deathcore. I think that 2005’s Bloodlust was undeniably deathcore, but by the Erik Rutan-produced Malice, the band had done away with all that.

Skepsis comes out February 2 on Prosthetic. I can’t wait to hear the rest.

-AR