Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Photographer credit: Ashley Simpson

WRISTMEETRAZOR has today released their third album, Degeneration, via Prosthetic Records. In support of Degeneration‘s release, the US metalcore band will be heading out on the East Coast Degeneration tour this April – with full details and dates below.

Stream Degeneration via Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Bandcamp and Spotify

Speaking on the album release, WRISTMEETRAZOR‘s Justin Fornof (vocals) comments: “This is an incredibly important record for us, Degeneration combines everything we have built with our first two LPs into the strongest iteration of our band. This is us at our most misanthropically realized. The heaviest – both lyrically and musically – and most dynamic presentation of who we are and what we’ve done.”

Degeneration tracklist:
1. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead
2. Static Reckoning
3. Trepanation
4. Xeroxed Reflection
5. DogdayGod
6. Love Thy Enmity
7. Culled and Forgotten
8. Synthetic-51n
9. No Ceremony
10. The Vanity Procession
11. Negative Fix
12. Greatest Love Offering in the History of the World

Following the release of their 2021 sophomore effort, Replica of a Strange Love, the WRISTMEETRAZOR’s line-up went through of metamorphosis with Justin Fornof abdicating his role on bass in favour of lead vocals – bringing Userelaine (bass) and Nate Billmyer (guitar) to the fold in the process. Extensive North American touring soon followed with stints on the road among the likes of Seeyouspacecowboy, Traitors, Eighteen Visions and festival appearances at Furnace Fest and Code Orange’s Code World, respectively.

Having solidified and fine-tuned the strengths of their latest incarnation onstage, the newly upgraded quintet found themselves with a renewed focus leading into Degeneration’s gestation period. During this moment of rare quiet WRISTMEETRAZOR sought the production, engineering, mixing and mastering skills of Randy Lebeouf (The Acacia Strain, Dying Wish, Kublai Khan). Ushering themselves into near total isolation in the woods of New Jersey, the writing and recording process for Degeneration was one of acute solitude, only leaving the studio’s cabin three times during the 30 day lock-in between almost non-stop 12 hour recording sessions.

Degeneration’s backdrop of self-imposed seclusion bore fruit as the album’s lyrical focus began to develop. Whilst there are still traces of WRISTMEETRAZOR’s established world of Nietzchian philosophy and twisted romanticism, Fornof found himself gravitating towards themes of misanthropy, apoplexy, and moral, political and religious hypocrisy within society. With WRISTMEETRAZOR’s ire pointed outwards rather than inwards, societal degeneration is explored through allegorical tales of mechanical decline and system failure that pull together to reveal a larger picture of the band’s disdain for humankind’s more repulsive traits.

Songs such as Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead, DogdayGod and The Greatest Love Offering in the History of the World reference intentional exits from society and sordid real life stories of assassination, against deftly woven industrial and EBM influences with groove based nu-metal flourishes at the fore. Degeneration’s post-apocalyptic production values lend a cold and methodically calculated quality to WRISTMEETRAZOR’s new skin, without losing the visceral core of their identity.

Seeking to ensure a fully realised aesthetic to represent the absurdity of seeking justice in an unjust world, the cover was put together by Philadelphia, PA visual artist Alex Eckman-Lawn (END, Dim Mak, Woe). Merging what was once flesh with machine and technology, Degeneration’s visual presentation is a towering counterpart to WRISTMEETRAZOR’s bleakest album to date.

WRISTMEETRAZOR East Coast Degeneration tour dates:
w/ The Requiem (April 8 – 21), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (April 3 – 6), Fallen God (April 8 – 10),
fromjoy (April 11 – 14), Silenus (April 16 – 21)

April 3 – Ottobar – Baltimore, MD
April 4 – Riffhouse Pub – Chesapeake, VA
April 5 – Milestone – Charlotte, NC
April 6 – New Brooklyn Tavern – Columbia, SC
April 8 – Pompano Brewery – Pompano Beach, FL
April 9 – Conduit – Orlando, FL
April 10 – Orpheum – Tampa, FL
April 11 – Canteen – Birmingham, AL
April 12 – Bogg’s Social – Atlanta, GA
April 13 – Arcane Workshop – Nashville, TN
April 14 – Vinos – Little Rock, AR
April 16 – Black Circle – Indianapolis, IN
April 17 – Preserving Underground – Pittsburgh, PA
April 18 – Rec Room – Buffalo, NY
April 19 – Kingsland – New York, NY
April 20 – Alchemy – Providence, RI
April 21 – Rockwood Music Hall – Boston, MA

WRISTMEETRAZOR is:
Justin Fornof – Vocals
Tyler Norris – Guitars
Bryan Prosser – Drums
Userelaine – Bass
Nate Billmyer – Guitars