The musical entity known as Gehenna formed out of the West Coast of America in 1993. A melding of thrash, hardcore punk, and blackened death metal, the band has never easily been identifiable by a single genre tag. Yet, Gehenna's unholy racket has still managed to find a worldwide audience, influencing bands like Blind to Faith, Rot in Hell, and Pulling Teeth throughout out the decades.
As deep as Gehenna's discography goes, one of their records has remained in the vaults since 2015. Engineered by Robert Orr (Integrity, Unreal City) and overseen by Jimmy Short, the perfectly titled Negative Hardcore will finally be seeing light of day thanks to the folks at Iron Lung Records.
Today, No Echo is offering a taste of the Negative Hardcore via "Black Valley Sun," a ripper from the forthcoming LP:
Gehenna vocalist Mike Cheese told me the following about the song:
"The lyrics for 'Black Sun Valley' were written in 2010 after a drug and alcohol fueled bout with depression that mistakenly left me stranded in Sun Valley, Nevada. While trying to figure out which bus I was going to take to get back to Reno, I was approached by a car load of neo-nazi shit bags in the parking lot of a fast food place. They proceeded to harass me for wearing a t-shirt with Spanish flag on it.
"While I’d wished it was about the results of the recent World Cup, it wasn’t. These inbred pieces of human dog shit were informing me that I need to 'Get the fuck out of America.' I replied with: 'Eat shit and die!' While I didn’t really care which one of the two actions they would take, I will admit, I had my fingers crossed for the latter. Unfortunately they didn’t eat shit or die. Instead they decided to take physical action.
"Two of the pale, bald, dipshits jumped out of the car and moved towards me in an aggressive fashion. One of them was shirtless and had a black sun wheel tattooed on his chest. Before the asswipes could attack or express a full thought, I delivered a message of love with a landscaping rock to both of the clowns faces. The blows broke their noses and shattered a few of the 9 teeth they each had.
"Before things got out of hand and that innocent rock had any more excitement, my bus pulled up. I quickly said my goodbyes and ran to catch my ride out of town. As the bus rolled away from the altercation, I thought to myself what a perfect analogy Sun Valley is for The United States. White America has been brainwashed into terrorizing anyone they see as “different” to express their love of capitalism and a country that is soon to become a failed state.
'White pride is for fucking morons.'"
Negative Hardcore will be out on July 28th and is up for pre-order Iron Lung Records (vinyl) and Bandcamp.
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Tagged: gehenna
