ALL SHALL PERISH have put out "Led To Slaughter", their second new song in fifteen years, and this time it comes attached to something more consequential than a single: the album is paid for.
The Northern California extreme metal band cleared its $75,000 Kickstarter goal to fund the first ALL SHALL PERISH record since 2011's "This Is Where It Ends", and "Led To Slaughter" was released on the other side of that. Like "Be As Kings, Be As Gods", which landed earlier this month and which we covered on September 5, it was produced by Zack Ohren — a long-standing collaborator whose credits also include MACHINE HEAD and FALLUJAH — and issued through Arson Theory, the music company co-founded by frontman Hernan "Eddie" Hermida.
The band is making the album independently, and is blunt about the circumstances: no record label, no manager. The Kickstarter breakdown they published is correspondingly unglamorous — $30,000 to finish recording, $18,000 for videos, $8,250 for promotion, $7,000 in contingency, $5,000 for mastering and $6,750 in platform fees.
They are on the road while it happens. "The Price Of Existence 20 Year Anniversary" tour opened on September 4 in Fresno, California and runs to October 3 in San Jose, marking two decades since the 2006 Nuclear Blast album that first put Hermida and lead guitarist Chris Storey in the band. The touring lineup is Hermida, Storey, guitarist Ben Orum, bassist Adrian Oropeza and drummer Andrew Baird.
That lineup took a long route back. Bassist Mike Tiner told Metal Injection in October 2013 that the band had had no choice but to fire Hermida after the singer joined SUICIDE SILENCE as the replacement for Mitch Lucker, who died in 2012. Two years later, in October 2015, ALL SHALL PERISH announced that Hermida and Storey were returning, alongside founding members Matthew Kuykendall, Caysen Russo and Orum, with original vocalist Craig Betit involved in some capacity. Tiner, the band said at the time, declined a personal invitation to take part.
Hermida, for what it is worth, is having a busy autumn on both fronts: SUICIDE SILENCE release "Graceless" on November 20 and tour behind it through December.