Deadguy release music video and single ‘Knife Sharpener’

From the first enraged scream that ignites DEADGUY‘s long-awaited sophomore album, this album is the kind of merciless chaos that’s been gone far too long. Overflowing with angular riffs, clashing guitars, fractured rhythms and gutter bass that no one does better, Deadguy have dug in deeper on Near-Death Travel Services, an album 30 years in the making and incoming June 27 via Relapse Records [pre-order].

Exactly one month until the album’s release, Deadguy have shared the record’s third single: the punchy, short and sweet banger “Knife Sharpener.”  The song is accompanied by an animated, 8-bit video game graphics-inspired music video that feels ripped from a 1980’s coin-op cabinet— watch it below.

There are no signs of this being a swansong; no winding down, no taking it easy or resting on their laurels. The band Deadguy was 30 years ago went into hibernation and came back as if no time had passed. How did it happen? How were they able to pull it off? Maybe some egghead professor of musicology can figure that out, but for the rest of us it’s best to just gratefully sit back and enjoy the massacre. 

Recorded in fits and starts over a matter of months, 11 songs made the cut to be mixed, mastered and aimed indiscriminately at an unsuspecting public under the banner of Near-Death Travel Services. Members, at once skeptical, were finally able to take in the whole thing and had the same opinion after digesting their creation: “We made a fucking Deadguy record.” 

Near-Death Travel Services tracklist:

1. Kill Fee
2. Barn Burner
3. New Best Friend
4. Cheap Trick
5. The Forever People
6. War With Strangers
7. Knife Sharpener
8. The Alarmist
9. The Long Search for Perfect Timing
10. All Stick & No Carrot
11. Wax Princess

A brief history of Deadguy: the New Jersey quartet of Crispy, Dave Rosenberg, Tim “Pops” Naumann and Tim Singer released an odd, sardonic, absolutely singular 7” called White Meat in 1994. That same year they enlisted guitar player Keith Huckins of groundbreaking NJ band Rorschach and unleashed a refined, even more vicious sound with their 7” Work Ethic. With only these six songs the band was already understood to be a menacing force in the emerging metalcore scene, both live and recorded, but it couldn’t have prepared anyone for what came next. They released the groundbreaking Fixation on a Coworker LP in 1995, an EP the following year then called it a day, making their entire storied existence only three years long. 

A 2021 documentary, Killing Music, led to the reconciliation and live shows, but there was more that needed to be done. Geographical hurdles, families and adult life are enough to stifle anyone’s creative output, but over the next few years the band was able to create something, according to drummer Dave Rosenberg, “out of sheer force of will.” 

Even though the band’s high standards led to a culling that left them with only the best tracks, they decided to get the opinion of a former co-conspirator. Enter Steve Evetts, the man behind the board during Fixation. Evetts knows what Deadguy should sound like, and by asking him to produce this new one they felt confident he’d keep the band from softening up or veering too far from what makes them so distinct.