Sumerlands release their new single and video “Force of a Storm,” the latest offering from the highly anticipated album Dreamkiller, out in just one week on Relapse. 

The band reveals, “This song is about those times when you do whatever it takes to get the blood up. Then youre ready to take on the night with as much power as you can harness. Sometimes it takes a little. Sometimes it takes a lot. But when you’re there, you know it and you are the storm.”

Sumerlands return with their first album in 6 years – Dreamkiller. In the driver’s seat is renowned producer and guitarist Arthur Rizk who polished these eight metallic gems at Philadelphia’s Redwood Studios with his brothers in Sumerlands. Coming off of recent production credits with Candy, Kreator, Soulfly, and Show Me The Body, Rizk needs no introduction. His past work and expertise behind the boards with Power Trip, Ghostemane, Code Orange’s Grammy nominated album, Forever, Sacred Reich and many others have blown minds for over a decade. But it’s Sumerlands that truly fulfills his dream of melancholic chug.

The Sabbath-inspired haze of their 2016 S/T debut has been turbocharged with bigger riffs, distinct, Jan Hammer worthy synths, and forays into Badlands gone doom. But although doom crackles at the edges of Dreamkiller, this is classic, melodic metal forged with the melodrama of the Scorpions, the emotional heft of Foreigner, with an extra dose of depression.    

The band’s alchemy is on full display throughout Dreamkiller as bassist Brad Raub (Eternal Champion) smirks behind his P-Bass while drummer Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Dream Unending) stares you dead in the face, swinging. New vocalist Brendan Radigan (Pagan Altar, Magic Circle) sings strikingly of lost souls in a world gone mad. Rizk and guitarist John Powers (Eternal Champion) keep their “Strats only” policy intact while wheeling in the full Marshall stacks to douse the record in glorious solos (witness the album closing duel of “Death to Mercy”).

Make no mistake, Dreamkiller is full of traditional metal fuel. Sumerlands have dug deeper into their secret well of cathartic riffage to soundtrack a planet “Running in circles as the bells, they chime.”

Photo Courtesy:  Jaclyn Woollard