I can’t quite believe this is real; it looks like the kind of crappy promo vid unsigned and never-will-be-signed bands send us on a near-daily basis, but this video is actually for Order of Ennead, which features Deicide drummer Steve Asheim, and will be releasing their second album, An Examination of Being, in the spring via Earache.

And the real bitch of it is that the song, “The Concept of Our Extinction,” is actually pretty rockin’…

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Look: after nearly 20 years of making brutal death metal, Deicide ain’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. So while “The Beginning of the End,” the opening track of their latest offering, Till Death Do Us Part, is kind of surprising (it’s a slow, moody instrumental, as foreboding as the title would suggest, that is unsettling and in no way beautiful, like the negative version of the intro to every American New Wave album this century), everything after is exactly what you’d expect from these fearsome Floridians. Chuck Klosterman once suggested that the reason the Sunshine State spawned so much awesome death metal is because constantly being surrounded by old people makes one think about death all the time; maybe all that ponderin’ of the great beyond also makes these dudes desperate to maintain their youth, and so they just keep making the same album they did in 1990 over and over again.

In any case, it’s a moot point, ’cause like AC/DC before them and Children of Bodom after, the fact that they’re usually pretty good slides them from the “boh-ring” column to the one labeled “dependable.”

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After I interviewed Deicide skinsman Steve Asheim a couple of weeks ago, I went back and listened to The Stench of Redemption for what must have been the first time in like a year. And you know what? The album still slays, and it just made me even more excited for the release of Deicide’s latest, ‘Till Death Do Us Part, which hits shelves April 28 in Europe and May 13 here in the States.

So now the band has made the title track avail as a free download on their MySpace page. And you know what? When Asheim told me that “A lot of people thought that Stench was too melodic and I think ‘Till Death has definitely tweaked that,” he wasn’t kidding. This track just relentlessly pummels, dude; Asheim’s drums are the aural equivalent of getting the shit kicked out of you by a drunk biker outside a bar you had no business being in in the first fuckin’ place. I’m saying it’s a good song.

It’s only April and it’s already turning out to be an awesome year for death metal; after new releases by Hate Eternal, Origin, and Arsis, ‘Till Death should be the next release on your “must own” list.

-AR

If you were to have a conversation about the most important and influential death metal bands of all time, you would, without a doubt, have to discuss Deicide. They are, simply put, iconic, and while many of their peers have fallen by the wayside over the years, they’re still going strong more than two decades later. In fact, after many had written them off, their last album, 2006′s The Stench of Redemption, was released to great acclaim by fans and critics alike. Now the band has a new album, entitled ‘Till Death Do Us Part, coming out on April 28 in Europe and May 13 in the U.S.; we haven’t gotten to hear it yet, but if “In the Eyes of God,” the song currently posted on the band’s MySpace page, is any indication, it will probably make Stench look like a Gordon Lightfoot record.

So when I was recently presented with the opportunity to interview founding drummer and primary songwriter Steve Asheim, I naturally jumped at the chance – so long as I could do the interview by e-mail. Truth be told, I feared that Asheim might be too evil, even for me.

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Normally we don’t just cut and paste press releases – there’s already a gajillion other sites that do that, and besides, who gives a fuck – but this one is just too funny not to post:

“DEICIDE SCORES A #1 HIT WITH U.S. TROOPS

Gathered from evidence obtained through various reports, leaked interrogation logs and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, a list of the top 24 songs strategically used on military prisoners in Iraq was recently made public, according to Mother Jones Magazine’s website.

Among a list of such musical luminaries as EMINEM, METALLICA and AC/DC (as well as non-luminary Barney The Dinosaur), was DEICIDE, coming in at number one with the song ‘Fuck Your God’ from 2004′s SCARS OF THE CRUCIFIX.

When word of this info first got to DEICIDE drummer, Steve Asheim,
the only thing he could really say was ‘It’s cool. If we’re upto military standards of audio abuse, it makes me feel like DECIDE’s doing our part for the troops.’ Of course this moment is not the only history that Asheim has with the armed forces. ‘My dad was a marine, as were my uncle and grandfather;’ says the DEICIDE skinsman. ‘I didn’t follow in their footsteps since I was so busy with the band thing, but I’m glad I was eventually able to contribute somehow.’

Some of the tactical circumstances where prisoners may have heard ‘Fuck Your God’ include sleep deprivation and interrogation disorientation. While some may see this information as a shock, other readers of the source article have taken a slightly different view of the situation. Commented one reader of the source article, ‘Honestly, the Barney theme song is more disturbing than DEICIDE’s F**k Your God.’”

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