Whitechapel with Chelsea Grin, The Acacia Strain, Netherwalker

Hymns in Dissonance, indeed: “No holds barred; there is nothing nice about HID, from the riffs to the lyrics to the overall vibe of the album,” states guitarist Alex Wade. “We attempted to write our heaviest album to date. We wanted to put out something that was shockingly menacing and brutal.” “The album follows the story of a cultist who is gathering worthy people to join his cult,” Wade furthers, “and there are moments in the storyline where the cult followers are singing an evil hymn to open a portal for the head cultist to enter.” The band’s dynamic, brutal musicality serves as a soundtrack to the compelling lyrical story that vocalist Phil Bozeman vividly imagines. “Hymns in Dissonance is a mockery of the true nature of what hymns are,” Bozeman explains. “Hymns are melodious and harmonious. Dissonance is the opposite of melody and harmony. Dissonance represents evil. The tracks on the record are the hymns, which represent the seven deadly sins, beginning from Track 3 to Track 10. Tracks one and two are the introduction.” The lineup’s timely and terrifying vision was first unveiled in Fall 2024 with the single “A Visceral Retch” inciting frenzied fans to call the song “a version of Whitechapel we have never heard before. Can’t explain how absolutely goddamn brutal this song is. This is a total dream come true.” The title track is the LP’s second single. Whitechapel, who formed in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2006, has seen the core lineup—vocalist Phill Bozeman; guitarists Ben Savage, Zach Householder and Alex Wade; bassist Gabe Crisp—intact since 2007, with the exception of the drummer Brandon Zackey, who has been playing with the band since 2022. While Hymns in Dissonance follows 2021’s Kin chronologically, the new album is actually somewhat of a sequel to This is Exile thematically, the three-word title Hymns in Dissonance representing that correlation. Whitechapel started writing for the new album at Householder’s studio in June of 2023, following the…