LEFT TO DIE have returned with their second pre-release single, 'Witch Of Hell' — and the track lands with all the primal brutality you'd expect from a band built on the genetic code of early DEATH.
The group's debut full-length, Initium Mortis, arrives July 17, 2026 via Relapse Records, and 'Witch Of Hell' makes it clear the album will be a deep and uncompromising dive into the original Florida death metal sound that helped reshape heavy music in the late 1980s.
LEFT TO DIE is not a tribute act or a casual nostalgia project. This is Rick Rozz — one of DEATH's earliest and most formative guitarists — and Terry Butler, the bassist who appeared on Leprosy (1988) before going on to MASSACRE and later joining OBITUARY. Alongside them are GRUESOME founders Matt Harvey (EXHUMED) and Gus Rios (ex-MALEVOLENT CREATION), two musicians who have spent years studying and refining the craft of old-school death metal. The combination is about as authoritative as it gets outside of a Chuck Schuldiner resurrection.
Initium Mortis draws on material that has never been officially recorded: songs from DEATH's pre-history as MANTAS, tracks from the Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy eras, and previously unreleased compositions from Schuldiner's earliest creative period. The track listing includes 'Legion Of Doom', 'Archangel', 'Power Of Darkness', 'Zombie', 'Witch Of Hell', 'Rise Of Satan', 'Summoned To Die', 'Mantas', 'Slaughterhouse', and 'Death By Metal' — titles that read like a liturgy for anyone who grew up on the earliest and most violent expression of American death metal.
Matt Harvey has noted that the project came together after considerable deliberation: "After going back and forth on the topic, we felt that exhuming some of these old tracks made the most sense for us." The word exhuming is well chosen. This is material that has existed in fragments and bootleg recordings for decades, and LEFT TO DIE are presenting it fully formed and faithfully executed for the first time.
'Witch Of Hell' itself is a short, savage eruption — feedback, down-tuned riffs, and vocals that carry the dust and rot of 1987 Florida rehearsal tapes. It is not trying to compete with contemporary death metal. It is asserting that the original form still has teeth.
Initium Mortis will be available on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, and digital formats. Pre-orders are open now through Relapse Records.