Meek Is Murder Onward/Into the Sun

Meek Is Murder announces the May 5th release of its third full-length album: Onward/Into the Sun.

Check out Noisey's exclusive premiere of "Outward," a track off Onward/Into the Sun, along with a video from the recording session, here. As Noisey's Brad Cohan warns, it's a "face-ripping sonic assault of dizzying riffage and bloody-throated screamoidness... Damaged-era Black Flag in a car crash with metallic hardcore merchants Botch."

Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Mike Keller (ex-The Red Chord), drummer Frank Godla (also of Enabler), and bassist Sam Brodsky, Brooklyn's Meek Is Murder has cemented itself as one of that city's new DIY powerhouses. Churning out six releases in six years and playing countless shows with a who's who of modern-day heavy – Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Retox, Fuck the Facts, Mutoid Man, Cult Leader, Loma Prieta, Old Wounds, and so on – Meek Is Murder is a machine with its controls set to "maximum." Through a nonstop shedding of blood and sweat, what began as Keller's bedroom solo project has evolved into a unique beast of a band and perhaps the most formidable live act in town.

Meek Is Murder's third full-length album, the aptly titled Onward/Into the Sun, sees the band team up with Rising Pulse Records, the label founded by Candiria guitarist and fellow Brooklynite John Lamacchia. Out May 5th on Rising Pulse, the album is a collection of two separate EPs: the brand new Onward and 2012's Into the Sun Where It Falls Off the Sky.

Onward was recorded by Kevin Bernsten (Full of Hell, Magrudergrind) at Developing Nations, while Into the Sun... was engineered and mixed by Kevin Antreassian (East of the Wall, Gridlink), produced by Jesse Korman of The Number Twelve Looks Like You, and released digitally by the band in 2012. Both EPs were mastered by Alan Douches (Converge, Mastodon).

Where the Onward EP is directionally themed ("Inward," "Upward," "Outward," etc.), Into the Sun... finds its inspiration in sci-fi flicks like Aliens and Back to the Future. (This is the band that also made a Christmas EP called Infant Worship. Like Graf Orlock, the concepts can be fun but the music is brutal realness.)

The Meek sound is unmistakable and it defies logic: minimal yet massive, comical yet dead serious, filthy yet precise as a watch made in Zurich. Something like the gnarled noise-core of Botch and Coalesce, re-imagined by a young punk with a very short attention span, Meek's tuneage is designed for pure impact. There are two speeds: buffalo charging toward a cliff, and buffalo tumbling off a cliff. Meek shifts between the two – from blazing D-beats and blasts, to wide-open breakdowns that momentarily nullify the line between falling and flying. And the best part: songs inflict their damage within a minute or two then it's on to the next.

Onward EP:
1) Foreword
2) Inward
3) Upward
4) Outward
5) Downward
6) Onward Toward a Red Horizon

Into the Sun Where It Falls Off the Sky EP:
1) Private William Hudson (Dead Meat)
2) Ellen Ripley (Into the Sun)
3) Doctor Emmett Brown (Endless in our Fleeting)
4) Marty McFly (88 mph)
5) Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Out of Gas)