Indulge us, if you will. The set-up: Saturday afternoon, somewhere in buttfuck middle-America. The scene: you and your slack-jawed Uncle Boffo are mindlessly ambling about the shoe department in Walmart, sucking up this week's deal on velcro runners and pig-shit protecting mukluks. While wiping the cheeto-dust from your pathetic patch of lip fur, you happen to catch a far-off glimpse of a titanic stack of consumer goods which seems to be beckoning you.
Curiously, its not your usual shrine of Oreo Cookies and Faygo. Without hesitation, you make your way towards this behemothic shrine. As you approach, four glorious words perched atop the hulking pile of brutality speak to you like nothing else in Walmart ever has: 'PREMIUM. PUNISHING. DEATH. METAL'. With tears streaming down your flushed, fat, crater-littered cheeks, you only then realize you are in heaven. The promised-land of Walmart. Brutality among the mundanity.
Death Metal a featured product in Walmart? I mean, it makes sense. Sam Walton (Walmart founder), in all his world-devouring efforts, was all about maximizing and streamlining your pleasure senses. If those senses are only titillated by gore-soaked album covers, packaged-in with Walmart generic-brand jogging shorts, well, there is money to be made. Our point is, these days, death metal is about as shocking as your gammie's homemade apple pie. Mark my words, the day will come when we see our beloved brutality alongside the Drake and Adele displays at your local Supercenter. Sure, at first it might be shocking to those not in the know. With time, consumers will see that death metal is as consumable/Walmartable as anything else. Nothing is sacred. To depths of depravity we shall descend… all of us… together.
So, if we here at ye olde stanky dank were in charge of shoveling this shit down the throats of Walmart consumers, our first big advert campaign would belong to Canada's Display Of Decay and their brand new album, Art In Mutilation. This four-piece, hailing from the Canadian badlands (Alberta – land of the dinosaurs), are an absolutely crushing ode to no-frills, old-school brutality (à la Cannibal Corpse and Deicide). This is the band we'd want to commoditize. This is the band we'd want to effect change. This is the band we'd want to bring gore, mutilation, and straight-up death metal perversity to the equally perverse People Of Walmart. After all, us death metallers are also people of Walmart.
It goes without saying that our job of marketing this beast would be an easy one. Right from the get-go there is a ton of juicy shit in this package. To start, Walmartians will immediately be drawn to the album art by Toshihiro Egawa (Defeated Sanity, Devourment, Malignancy). If that weren't enough, Art In Mutilation was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Cryptopsy guitarist Christian Donaldson (alongside Marc-o Fréchette) at The Grid (Beyond Creation, Cryptopsy, Ingested) in Montreal, Quebec. As a bonus, Walmart shoppers will be ecstatic to hear that Donaldson also makes a guest appearance on the album (damn, this thing just sells itself!).
To back up our claims, we have an exclusive first-listen of new material, in the form of the official lyric video for the song "Forced Frontal Lobotomy" (quite fitting, that title). In the meantime, pre-order your copy of Art Of Mutilation ahead of the May 18th release on Gore House Productions.
