US metalcore quintet WRISTMEETRAZOR has today announced their upcoming third album, Degeneration, set for release via Prosthetic Records on March 29. Alongside the album announcement WRISTMEETRAZOR has shared the lead single and music video for Trepanation, directed by Cameron Nunez.
WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR TREPANATION BELOW.
Stream Trepanation via Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Bandcamp and Spotify
Pre-order Degeneration here.
Speaking on the announcement, WRISTMEETRAZOR‘s Justin Fornof (vocals) comments: “We chose Trepanation as the first single because it summed up the new direction of the record in the most aggressive way possible. Unlike our last record, this one features new members Elaine on bass and Nate on guitar.
“The song is the reflection of a dream I had a few days before flying to New Jersey to record, I had dreamed that I was in some sort of nightmarish cooking show that had me cut off my own hand, boil and eat it. Afterwards I looked at the stump where my hand was and felt phantom movements.
“The record is about misanthropy and being driven beyond nihilism to hate, this song is my self-internalization of that. Pain seeks more pain, at least in my experience.”
Following the release of their 2021 sophomore effort, Replica of a Strange Love, the WRISTMEETRAZOR’s line-up went through of metamorphosis with Justin Fornof abdicating his role on bass in favour of lead vocals – bringing Userelaine (bass) and Nate Billmyer (guitar) to the fold in the process. Extensive North American touring soon followed with stints on the road among the likes of Seeyouspacecowboy, Traitors, Eighteen Visions and festival appearances at Furnace Fest and Code Orange’s Code World, respectively.
Having solidified and fine-tuned the strengths of their latest incarnation onstage, the newly upgraded quintet found themselves with a renewed focus leading into Degeneration’s gestation period. During this moment of rare quiet for the group, WRISTMEETRAZOR sought the production skills of Randy Lebeouf (The Acacia Strain, Dying Wish, Kublai Khan). Ushering themselves into near total isolation in the woods of New Jersey, the writing and recording process for Degeneration was one of acute solitude, only leaving the studio’s cabin three times during the 30 day lock-in between almost non-stop 12 hour recording sessions.
Degeneration’s backdrop of self-imposed seclusion bore fruit as the album’s lyrical focus began to develop. Whilst there are still traces of WRISTMEETRAZOR’s established world of Nietzchian philosophy and twisted romanticism, Fornof found himself gravitating towards themes of misanthropy, apoplexy, and moral, political and religious hypocrisy within society. With WRISTMEETRAZOR’s ire pointed outwards rather than inwards, societal degeneration is explored through allegorical tales of mechanical decline and system failure that pull together to reveal a larger picture of the band’s disdain for humankind’s more repulsive traits.
Songs such as Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead, DogdayGod and The Greatest Love Offering in the History of the World reference intentional exits from society and sordid real life stories of assassination, against deftly woven industrial and EBM influences with groove based nu-metal flourishes at the fore. Degeneration’s post-apocalyptic production values lend a cold and methodically calculated quality to WRISTMEETRAZOR’s new skin, without losing the visceral core of their identity.
Seeking to ensure a fully realised aesthetic to represent the absurdity of seeking justice in an unjust world, the cover was put together by Philadelphia, PA visual artist Alex Eckman-Lawn (END, Dim Mak, Woe). Merging what was once flesh with machine and technology, Degeneration’s visual presentation is a towering counterpart to WRISTMEETRAZOR’s bleakest album to date.