With apologies to the mighty Jucifer, Jim and Rachel Valosik are truly the underground’s most violent power couple. And powerviolence is one of the few genres that Forest of Tygers don’t explore on long-in-the-making full-length debut I Will Die of Violence. Dropping on Acteon Records this Friday, November 8, the Nashville-based two-piece’s opus is a relentless exercise in extremity that (as the press release handily notes) “pull[s] from sludge, black metal, death metal, doom and hardcore … further enhance[d] by layering aspects of atmospheric, math and progressive metal.” And all that, we assure you, without ever sounding like the mid-aughts kitchen sink dreck we sadistically used to force Kevin Stewart-Panko to review. In addition to juggling guitars and guttural vox, frontman Jim Valosik is already one hell of a promising director, as evidenced by his batshit short film for “Mongers” from FOT’s 2017 split with Krallice/Yellow Eyes offshoot Anicon. Which track on I Will Die of Violence best lends itself to hammering horror? Sample its nine tracks of lunacy below and fling yourself on the bandwagon of one of the most criminally underrated bands in extreme music today.
