EPK – Mindrazer – A Thing of Nightmares (2023) (Misanthropic Records)

EPK – Mindrazer – A Thing of Nightmares (2023)

Publicist – Jon Asher – jon[@]ashermediarelations[.]com

“The fans are gonna love it. It’s bold, brutal, and diverse. The pits have already been opening for these songs at the live show, even though nobody knew them. Now that people can go home and get to know these songs for real… no mind is safe from the Mindrazer. Every song offers something different. We took the inverse of the AC/DC approach. We grew up in the playlist era, albums can’t be the same anymore. Every song has to keep the listener on edge and bring something new to the table to keep people from going to something else.” – Nick DeFuria – Lead Vocals and Guitar – Mindrazer

For fans of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Blind Guardian, Power Trip, Trivium

Band: Mindrazer
Album Title: “A Thing of Nightmares”
Release Date: October 13, 2023
Label: Misanthropic Records
Distribution: Distrokid

Mindrazerband.wixsite.com/home | Instagram.com/mindrazerofficial | Facebook.com/mindrazerofficial | YouTube | Spotify | Officialmindrazer.bandcamp.com

“The Bruce worship is strong but pulled off very well! I like the contrast between the powerful clean vocals and ultra thrash instrumental portion. The bass pops very well and the drums are frantic but on point.” – Cutting Edge Metal (USA)

“Entombed in Time stands out for its old school thrash metal concept accompanied by the fantastic and live sounding performances of Mindrazer.” -Metalhead Community Magazine (Switzerland)

“Good songs, really good guitar, even better vocalist; they’ll go far!” -Mark Wasserman, 3 and 1 Grab Productions, Live Sound: Nick Cannon’s “Wild n’ Out”, Barclay Center, Madison Square Garden, Staples Center, Arco Arena etc.

“It was an insane show! At one point the lead singer who was also playing guitar, steps out in front, puts his arm up, points a finger down and starts moving it in a circle like he’s indicating to the crowd “I want you to make a circle pit now” and you felt the entire mood of the room just change. Everyone got ready and they played this really heavy song. It was so good!” -WRCU-FM Radio Into the Pit

Band: Mindrazer
Album Title: “A Thing of Nightmares”
Release Date: October 13, 2023
Label: Misanthropic Records
Distribution: Distrokid

Track Listing:
1. Entombed In Time (5:36)
2. Suffer in Silence (4:05)
3. Left to Rot (6:09)
4. In the Corner of Your Eye (6:06)
5. Knightfall (5:35)
6. The Misanthropist (6:11)
7. Extractor (4:51)
8. Better Dead (4:07)
9. Crusader (6:25)
10. Mercy (1:12)
Album Length: 50:22

Album Credits:
Tracks 1 & 3 by Nick DeFuria and Mo Uddin
Track 2 by Zack Larmer, Nick DeFuria, Vin Verducci and Brian Weissman
Track 4 by Nick DeFuria, Zack Larmer and Patrick Wentz
Tracks 6 and 9 by Nick DeFuria and Zack Larmer
Tracks 5, 7, 8 and 10 by Nick DeFuria
Production:
Produced by Kevin Anteressean (of Dillenger Escape Plan)
Mixed by Simon Ficken
Mastered by Josh Gannet
Artwork by Amber Leute

Album Recording Lineup:
Nick DeFuria – Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar, Classical Guitar, Additional Percussion
Vin “Hawky” Verducci – Bass Guitar
Brian Weissman – Drums, Percussion, Harsh Vocals
Zack Larmer – Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals
Featuring guest guitar solo from Mo Uddin on track 7

Live Band Lineup
Nick DeFuria – Lead Vocals and Guitar
Vin “Hawky” Verducci – Bass Guitar
Brian Weissman – Drums, Harsh Vocals
Patrick Wentz – Guitar and Harsh Vocals

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About The Album Artwork:

Khowyrd, the Mindrazer extracting the brain of his unsuspecting victim in front of an interdimensional portal.

About The Album (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):

Mindrazer’s debut full-length outing A Thing of Nightmares is a showcase of range. The New Jersey thrashers demonstrate immediately that they aren’t afraid to push the boundaries of the genre, whether it is crushing breakdowns, modern-tinged leads or even borrowing tropes from power metal. It is technical, epic, brutal but most of all fun. Borrowing stories from history, literature, and cinema, the album touches on themes of horror, shame, anger, oppression, and mania by way of story, metaphor, and allegory. They aren’t reinventing the genre or breaking significant new ground but they are bucking modern thrash trends of coalescing around the hardcore-laden neo-thrash and never straying from it and are doing so without regrets.

Track by Track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):

1. Entombed in Time: A contemplative thrasher with lots of twists and turns, rhythmic riffs, and grandiose melodic passages that tell of overcoming regret and shame

2. Suffer in Silence: A bipolar anthem that has uplifting highs and brutal chugging lows. This one is about the toxic culture surrounding internet discourse.

3. Left to Rot: a technical and manic 6/8 thrasher that is full of old-school riffs and wild guitar solos. The lyrics alternate from metaphor to on the nose about the failures of the American social safety net

4. In the Corner of Your Eye: a Metallica-esque power ballad with soaring vocals and a twist-and-turns-laden structure, it tells the story of a man who was killed by a demon and all of his loved ones forgot he ever existed. He watches over his family as a ghost but quickly realizes that they forgot him and he is driven mad and begins to haunt them.

5. Knightfall: Our power metal anthem, with some tasty D minor riffage, harmonies, and an infectious chorus. This song is about Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.

6. The Misanthropist: Another moody thrasher borrowing techniques from second-wave black metal. The lyrics tell of the life and times of Jon Nodveidt

7. Extractor: This song is about our namesake monster the Mindrazer as he seduces his victim into a sense of serenity and then extracts and consumes their brain. A hypnotic thunderbolt of a song at breakneck speed with atypical chromatic riffing, dissonant alien leads, and bone-crushing breakdowns.

8. Better Dead: An angsty politically charged riff machine. It is our take on the classic 0, 3, 6 song. This one is a fresh take on that tried and true classic with a heaping dose of thoughtful anti-authority energy for good measure.

9. Crusader: A frenetic epic with an infectious riff, and constant twists and turns that really paints the picture of riding into battle to fight on a blood-covered, snowy battlefield in medieval Finland.

10. Mercy: A simple melancholy serenade on classical guitar, a solemn and contemplative end to bring the listener down from the metal fire that precedes it.

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Fun Facts – Story Angles

1. Nick and Brian recorded an actual sword fight live in the studio for Crusader. They brought in some swords they got at a Renaissance fair and spent an hour screaming and bashing swords together to make layers and layers of a battle sound effect.

2. The band’s mascot Khowyrd (pronounced ‘Howard’) is a Mindrazer, an aberrant, otherworldly being from another dimension. It uses its neurotoxin-tipped facial tentacles to engulf its victim’s head and then bore its proboscis into the skull and consume the knowledge from its victim’s mind, leaving behind a mindless husk that bends to its every whim. Khowyrd is a frequent fixture of Mindrazer shows and regularly shows up on stage during performances to tantalize and seduce an unsuspecting audience

3. The producer for this record, Kevin Antereassean, played guitar in Dillinger Escape Plan

Combining the anthemic melodies of Traditional and Power Metal, the precise, aggressive attack of Thrash, and twists of dark intensity borrowed from Second-Wave Black Metal, Mindrazer plays a style as familiar as it is fresh. Since 2017, the New Jersey quartet has straddled the boundaries between the different sides of Metal music. Despite their relative newness to the scene, the band has already taken on everything from punkish romps to soaring, conceptual epics, from metallic ballads to the upper limits of extremity within the clean-vocal Thrash format, all while retaining a distinct and coherent sound.

The story of Mindrazer begins years before their official formation when a high school marching band’s rendition of Tool served as the catalyst for the meeting of Nick DeFuria (Rhythm Guitar/Lead Vocals) and Brian Weissman (Drums/Percussion).  Though the two experimented with different ideas for a metal band, things truly got off the ground in their college years, when they met Vin “Hawky” Verducci (Bass) and formed a Thrash trio that would become Mindrazer.

Though the trio had potential, and could finally begin to gig, it would take some time to iron out the kinks of their sound and transform from amateur imitators of metal giants to instant classics in their own right. Over the course of their college years, they would tighten their chops, expand their songwriting palette, refine their showmanship, experiment with a couple different lead guitarists, and develop a new image, with a new name to boot.  By the point of their graduation, The band took the name Mindrazer, titled after a monster inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft and tabletop RPGs, but with unique lore developed by the band.  Khøwyrd, the band’s abominable yet whimsical mascot, perfectly encapsulates the spirit the band has cultivated.  Frontman Nick’s soaring, operatic vocals tackle the horrors of history, society, and the human imagination – at once in all seriousness, and all in good fun, as only a great metal band can.

With their most recent addition, that of the infinitely charismatic shredder, Mo Uddin, Mindrazer has reached a new level of mastery, grounded in traditional thrash but never bound to it; stretching its limits with graceful yet fierce dual-tremolo, crushing breakdowns, and prog-inspired, sweeping leads. His arrival came just in time to refine the band’s upcoming debut “A Thing of Nightmares” to the level of a mad science. With their sound sharpened and polished to all the cold, hard, vicious elegance of a steel razor to the brain, Mindrazer is back with a vengeance, and no mind is safe.