Malhavoc release The Masquerade's Death on 13 November through Cursed Blessing Records, their first full length since 2000.
Six songs fill close to seventy minutes and five of them run past ten, which is not how this band used to work. The old Malhavoc record was short, mechanical and nasty. This one takes Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death and follows the story through to the end, with the industrial and electronic parts carrying the narrative rather than decorating it.
Jimi LaMort conceived, recorded and mixed the whole thing. He is joined by Steve Jelliman and Lee McCormack, all three of them playing whatever the song needs, and a list of guests that reaches back into the line up the band had in the eighties.
Asked what possessed them to write about a plague party at the end of the world, LaMort answered that nobody does not want apocalyptic music during the end times.
Decibel is streaming the record in full ahead of the release, which lands on a Friday the thirteenth. Vinyl, compact disc and digital all go out the same day. The band formed in Toronto in 1983 and has been loosely active ever since.