Maceration have released The Fall of Virtue with a lyric video, the first song from Mercy to the Miserable, their fourth album, out on 20 November through Emanzipation Productions.
The interesting part of the announcement is who is not on it. Dan Swano produced the two records the Danish band made after they came back, and Jakob Schultz says plainly that they could have carried on with him. Instead the album was mixed and mastered by Lawrence Mackrory at Rory Sound, whose credits run through Paradise Lost, Bloodbath, Meshuggah, Vomitory and Lik.
Schultz frames it as curiosity rather than a falling out. They wanted to see what a different pair of hands would do to the sound, he says, and they have not regretted it, because the record came out the way they hoped. Bands rarely say that part out loud about a producer they have just left.
What has not changed is the HM-2 tone, which is the one thing a band in this corner of death metal does not negotiate away. The Fall of Virtue goes straight in with no build up, fast and melodic at the same time, and the eight track album moves from there to the heavier Mind in a Chokehold and a title track Schultz describes as melodic and brutal at once.