Gas Mask Fever – Streaming New Kommandant

When the idea of running an advance stream of a track from The Architects of Extermination, the forthcoming third album by Chicago’s Kommandant was proposed to me, I was all naively like, “Well, shucks and swell! Sure! Why not?!” Good call, dummy. For all I know, I could have just committed myself to supporting a leader of the next generation of New Wave of American Heavy Metal/nu-funk thrash movement (assuming there was an old generation) by failing to look before I leapt.

Actually, at various points over the past decade after the band initially formed in 2005, I had heard the Kommandant named tossed around even if I knew them better as the band that decked themselves out like a gang of Black Op mercenaries-for-hire and always wore gas masks no matter how hot steamy the stage they were raging on got. Luckily, when I got around to spinning the track below, “And Nation Shall Rise Against Nation” it turned out to be a rad ripper of blackened thrash, resplendent with light-speed tremolo flurries and vocals that layer Florida death metal taking a trip into the cosmos with the sounds of dudes falling down country wells. Check it out and dig the pain.

ATMF releases The Architects of Extermination on April 27th, which also happens to be my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday ol’ gal! I’m sure you continue to be thrilled with my mentioning you in my various writing and in the metal press.

Kommandant’s Homepage and Facebook

*Live photo lifted from their Facebook page