Carcass return with thunderous new single, Dance of Ixtab (Psychopomp & Circumstance March No. 1)

Death-metal icons Carcass have released the second single from their upcoming album, the thundering riff-a-thon Dance of Ixtab (Psychopomp & Circumstances March No. 1).

Taking its cue from the album’s lead single – the brutally assembled Kelly’s Meat Emporium – as well as the rest of Carcass’s revered repertoire, Dance of Ixtab is everything you’d expect from the British four-piece.

Following a fairly tame prologue, the cut, which once again features the ridiculously gain-drenched, harmonized electric guitar escapades of Bill Steer, is quintessential Carcass, layering on a mammoth vocal line courtesy of Jeff Walker’s visceral voice and an unrelenting barrage of post-apocalyptic guitar parts.

You can listen to the track and all its grisly goodness galore in the video below.

Dance of Ixtab will feature on Carcass’s upcoming studio effort, Torn Arteries – the band’s first album in eight years following the release of their four-track 2020 EP, Despicable.

The album itself was a year-long project that the band began to embark on last year, which, due to the impact of Covid, saw the recording process split over to countries. While the guitars were taken care of in Leeds, UK, the drums were tracked in Sweden.

Covid’s impact heavily permeates throughout the group’s new offering, with Walker citing Dance of Ixtab as “a foot-stomping festival anthem that will go unheard in an empty, vacuous, post-Covid world stadium, where used lateral flow tests blow around as litter in the breeze”.

Of the album, Walker continued, "I think as our seventh album, it does stand out from the others both sonically and stylistically.

"You can definitely tell that it’s Carcass; when you drop that needle on the vinyl, when you hear that guitar tone, you can tell it’s Bill Steer, but each album is always a product of its time."

Torn Arteries will be released on September 17 via Nuclear Blast Records, and is available to preorder now.