Forbidden have put out "Single Point Failure", the last song before their self-titled album arrives on Friday, sixteen years after the one before it.
The same night the record lands, the band start a headlining tour in Las Vegas with Heathen and Void, then run through Salt Lake City, Denver, Iowa City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Lakewood and Pittsburgh. Putting the album out on the first night of the tour means every room on that run will have heard it for exactly as long as the band have been on the road.
Three songs out in advance is a modest campaign by the standards of a comeback record, and the band have kept the same approach to all of it: no retrospectives, no anniversary framing, just the songs in the order they decided to release them.
Heathen share more than a bill with them. The two bands have been circling each other in the Bay Area since the eighties, and the current Forbidden line-up has drawn on that pool more than once.