San Jose death metallers Ripped To Shreds have announced that they’ll follow their great 2022 album 劇變 (Jubian) with a new LP, Sanshi, on September 27 via Relapse (pre-order). Here’s some background on the album, via press release:
Conceptually, Sanshi sees the band dig into a morbid fixation on death and the afterlife in the context of traditional Chinese folklore. Tracks like the lead single “Perverting the Funeral Rites, Stripped for the Dead” is a song inspired by obscure funeral rites in Taiwan, wherein exotic dancers perform lithe rituals for living and dead alike. Elsewhere, “Force Fed” delves into the legend of Meng Po’s “Elixir of Forgetfulness”, which when drunk by the dead wipes their memories clean before they are reborn into their next incarnation. “Living In Effigy” was inspired by real life tales of photographers traversing remote rural China, taking funeral portraits of the elderly who died in solitude.
Sanshi‘s cover art comes courtesy of Lee’s long-term collaborator, artist Guang Yang, and depicts a scene of Yan Luo Wang, The God of Hell, and the dead who must face his judgment in his demonic court.
“Perverting the Funeral Rites, Stripped for the Dead” is a thrash-infused death metal ripper, and as bandleader Andrew Lee says, the band “wanted to come out of the gates swinging with [their] most morbid and grinding material yet.” He adds that the song “showcases our new live approach with constant vocal and solo tradeoffs, and we shot the video in Taiwan with a real Daoist priest as a natural extension of RTS’ narrative approach to songwriting.” Check out the song and JR Shia-directed video below.
Tracklist
Into the Court of Yanluowang
Force Fed
燒冥紙 (Sacrificial Fire)
孽鏡臺 (Visions of Sin, Mirror of Darkness)
Feast of the Deceased
Horrendous Corpse Resurrection
Living in Effigy
冥婚 (Corpse Betrothal)
Cultivating Towards Ascension
Perverting the Funeral Rites, Stripping for the Dead