Track Premiere: Afterbirth – ‘Sifting Through the Sands of the Unholy’

Reunited brutal death dealers Afterbirth are giving listeners a crash course in brutal death metal with their first full-length album, The Time Traveler’s Dilemma. Featuring Will Smith (Artificial Brain, Buckshot Facelift) on vocals, the new album follows a 2015 EP from the band. 

Stream “Sifting Through the Sands of the Unholy” below now! 

“Originally, this song was always intended to be an instrumental,” guitarist Cody Drasser explains. “Even when we had our original, pioneering death metal vocalist Matt Duncan in the band and I was preparing the song to show to the rest of the members, it always had a sense, to me at least, of being a long, epic and atmospheric progressive death metal track that lent itself more to mental imagery and inner wanderings than needing any particular lyrical vision. Conceptually, I had always been reminded of the horrific ambience and terror of HP Lovecraft’s ‘The Nameless City’ when I was piecing the song together. The song title itself arose from a late night death metal talk with a friend of mine many, many years ago and it always stuck in my head as being particularly inventive and memorable.”

“When I heard it, I could imagine classic Afterbirth vocal patterns and easily convinced the guys to let me write and record the song’s vocal mix,” Smith adds. “I’m very proud that it ended up being used on the album.”

The Time Traveler’s Dilemma is out on Unique Leader on July 26.