Back in November 2016, we'd noticed that Deicide guitarist Jack Owen had quietly been replaced in the band by Monstrosity guitarist Mark English. Owen performed on everything from 2006's The Stench of Redemption to 2013's In The Minds Of Evil, and ultimately joined his ex-Cannibal Corpse friend Chris Barnes in Six Feet Under.
So what the hell happened? According to drummer Steve Asheim via Metal Wani, Owen didn't really like that Deicide was re-writing the songs it had written for its upcoming album, and just "left one day and just never came back."
"We were just kind of writing the record, and we were going over the songs. Me and Glen, we were, like, 'We wanna redo the songs.' It's like we had completed them — about nine or twelve, whatever how many songs. They were all right, but we weren't really psyched about them. So we decided to rewrite them. And Jack didn't really like it. And he kind of left one day and just never came back. So that was that. He's not on [the new album]. I haven't talked to the guy in almost a year."
As far as the new album goes, Asheim is hoping the album will come out at the end of this year, saying "I'm hoping for the end of the year. But I was hoping for the end of last year." So we'll see!
"The record is coming along. We've got songs recorded — rhythms, drums — and it sounds amazing. It's gonna be heavy as shit. What we're waiting to do is complete it with vocals, leads and the mix, and that kind of takes some time. We could have rushed in there to try and get it done, but we don't really wanna do that. We did that before with records, and it doesn't work out. It pays to wait a little, make sure it's right, everyone feels good about it. I'd like it to be done sooner, but I'd like everything to be done sooner."
