Former The Faceless Guitarist Wes Hauch Joins Black Crown Initiate; New Song Released

This isn’t a total shock, given that the band’s Facebook page has apparently had him listed as a member for nearly a month, but: Wes Hauch, former guitarist for The Faceless, has joined the ranks of Pennsylvania’s Black Crown Initiate. He replaces Rik Stelzpflug, which is great news for people like me who can never remember how to spell “Stelzpflug.” I’m not sure how it will impact BCI overall — I have less than no idea about the band’s songwriting process, and I’m not even clear whether or not Hauch contributed to their forthcoming sophomore effort, Selves We Cannot Forgive. But it will definitely save me some cut n’ paste effort.

ANYWAY, along with the news comes the new album’s title track, which you can stream below, courtesy of Metal Injection. It’s pretty rad; it transitions back and forth from being a fairly mellow prog song to a super-intense death metal song, and it totally works. Most impressive. There’s a reason these young up n’ comers are getting so much attention, y’know?

Crank this shit. Selves We Cannot Forgive comes out July 22 on eOne. Pre-order it here. The band hits the road with Ne Obliviscaris and Starkill earlier that month; get dates here.