2025's Most Surprising Comeback

Back in April, the acclaimed metalcore group Deadguy announced their signing with Relapse Records and their second studio album, released on June 27 this year. Deadguy's debut in 1995 titled Fixation on a Coworker was an unprecedented fusion of hardcore speed, aggression, and a kicking-screaming attitude with chaotic metallic riffs for its time. Metalcore has a difficult history to pin down, and has effectively described three different genres at different periods in its history, but the style Deadguy pioneered would influence and inspire many of the most hectic groups out there. The likes of Converge, Botch, Cave In, and The Dillinger Escape Plan have Fixation on a Coworker to credit for all but inventing the niche of Mathcore.

But Deadguy didn't last, breaking up in '97 before the genre they had helped pioneer could hit it's peak in the aughts. Now, 30 years since their debut, Deadguy have returned-- and they are so, so back. Near-Death Travel Services is out and the band hasn't missed a solitary beat. Between pitching-and-turning rhythms and unfettered aggression, Travel Services plays like a single long treatise on modern society, the ills that these New Jersey punks raged against in the nineties have only exaggerated themselves: con-men in the White House and secret police illegally kidnapping the very economic and communal backbones of our country.

Track two, "Barn Burner", makes it's position on the prevalence of strong-man masculinity and poorly veiled racism clear with lines like "I don't hate you, I just feel better when you're not around" and "I wish I was deep, but I'm two feet tall". Deadguy are a band made up of 5 white, 50+ year old men from Jersey, and their disgust at the lack of any empathy or compassion in their demographic peers is perfectly clear.

I'm not usually much of a lyrics focused person, probably at least partially due to the near illegibility of many harsh vocal styles. However, Deadguy have made something here whose metaphors and satires hit me in just the right way. The turns of phrase used to express their frustration and compassion are the right mix of poetic and direct. My favourite example comes from their expression of the cycle of poverty and racial divides: "We gave them wings. With nowhere to fly. So we broke their wings, and told them to jump".

But Near-Death Travel Services is not an album entirely focused on the injustice of the desolate state of U.S. politics: "Kill Fee" focuses on fighting fire with fire, of pushing through hate and violence to fight back. It's the political resistance so ingrained in the DNA of hardcore; that ethos inspired in equal parts by histories revolutionaries and philosopher's and it's war-mongers and corruption.

Musically Near-Death Travel Services does little novel or unique, but what it does do is utilize genre convention for off the walls and focused fury. "War with Strangers" opens with a lengthy and memorable bass intro before launching sky high on enormous riffs, spaced and sludge-y drumming, and varied tempos. The final track, "Wax Princess" is nearly apocalyptic in sound, capitalizing on the mounting tension and blistering speed established in the opener "Kill Fee" that runs throughout the record. The outro of "Wax Princess" has probably my favourite riff of the album, a brutal and dissonant breakdown pairing with the enormous and evolving drums and hoarse, visceral vocal performance.

A comeback like this is truly unbelievable after so much time, these guys sound in their absolute prime and their only previous album came out 30 years ago. Bravo, Deadguy, you pulled off the impossible-- so many reunions result in bland and uninspired music. But say what you will about this album, it most certainly is not bland, and it is not uninspired.

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We are criminals with no crime.

If you're going to make me the criminal, let me do the crime

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