Bay Area thrash metal veterans FORBIDDEN have announced a new self-titled album, due October 23 via BLKIIBLK, a division of Frontiers Label Group, and shared the record's new single "Psyclops."
The eleven-track album was recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California, with engineer and co-producer Zack Ohren, and includes "Single Point Failure," "Burning The Lungs Of Earth," "Divided By Zero," "DCLXVI," "Psyclops," "Jisei," "Mutually Assured Dysfunction," "Sycophantasy," "The Burden," "Sol Grave" and "Flower Of Life (Chaos By Design)."
Guitarist Craig Locicero said "Psyclops" was among the last pieces of the album to come together. "'Psyclops' was the final song completed for our newest self-titled offering. It came together quickly," he said. Reflecting on the album as a whole, Locicero described a longer and more demanding creative process than the band's past records. "Making 'Forbidden' felt more like an odyssey than a typical recording process...every member brought their best," he said.
The band's current lineup features vocalist Norman Skinner, guitarists Locicero and Jeremy Von Epp, bassist Matt Camacho and drummer Chris Kontos. FORBIDDEN emerged from the Bay Area thrash scene in the mid-1980s alongside genre pillars like EXODUS, TESTAMENT and DEATH ANGEL, and the band's choice to self-title their new album signals a kind of creative reset — a statement of identity nearly four decades into their history.
The announcement adds to what has already been an active year for Bay Area thrash veterans, with several of the scene's founding bands continuing to tour and release new material well into their fifth decade. With "Psyclops" now available and the full album arriving in October, FORBIDDEN's self-titled effort arrives as one of the year's notable Bay Area thrash releases, extending a scene lineage that continues to produce vital new material well beyond its 1980s origins.