Album review: Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services

The title of this second album by New Jersey hardcore legends Deadguy could easily be applied to the state of the world right now. Wherever you look, things are a mess, and it feels like humanity is on the verge of extinction. The 11 songs on Near-Death Travel Services are an angry and direct response to the greed and the idea of rugged individualism that has been tearing humanity apart for too long, buy the name is also a light-hearted, self-deprecating dig at the band themselves.

That’s because this record is being released 30 years after their debut, the hugely influential Fixation On A Co-Worker. That’s basically an entire generation’s worth of time – take that, Chinese Democracy! – and the band are well aware that being older and playing and touring such vicious, brutal music isn’t, on paper, what people their age are meant to be doing.

Still, what’s on paper so often doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation. Whether or not you’re aware of Deadguy’s history, the boiling, bubbling energy of this record is so extreme that it seems unfathomable that a band formed in 1994 could make it. From the first second of opener Kill Fee through to the heavy chugging riffs that drive closer Wax Princess, this is a constant gut-punch of an album that refuses to relent for even one second.

Barn Burner is a ferocious squall of fury and bellicose belligerence, Cheap Trick a blast of intense and forthright old school hardcore, and War With Strangers an avalanche of a song that starts off slow and sinister before gathering pace in a flurry of acerbic riffs and shouts. Throughout it all, vocalist Tim Singer sounds pissed off and ill-tempered – but why wouldn’t he be? A punishingly powerful reflection of and rebuke to the world we live in, Near-Death Travel Service proves there’s plenty of vim, vigour and vitality – life, in other words – left in Deadguy. Hopefully it won’t be another three decades before the next one.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Converge, Botch, The Dillinger Escape Plan

Near-Death Travel Services is released on June 27 via Relapse