In Dead Deities, SATANIC PLANET’s new album for Relapse Records, we see a band coming into its own while offering an aggressive, pitch-black, deeply surly call-to-arms against autocracy in the age of Christian nationalism. Lucien Greaves (The Satanic Temple co-founder and spokesperson), Luke Henshaw (Planet B, Sonido de la Frontera, First Power Crew, Variations In the Key of the Afterlife), Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Misfits, Mr. Bungle, Dead Cross), and Justin Pearson (The Locust, Swing Kids, Deaf Club) are now a fully together-in-the-studio band with razor-sharpened focus, creating a sound and lyrical catalog of ideas that Greaves says is both more personal and even closer aligned to the goals of The Satanic Temple, which through art, action, and activism seeks to “encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practiced common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits.” The Satanic Temple and SATANIC PLANET are here to empower all those who are needed in the ongoing battle against theocracy, apathy, and inequality.

Dead Deities begins as a brooding, doomy soundscape with backwards ritualistic vocals that churn forward like a barbaric horror flick scene before launching into the aptly named “Antichrist,” with a hypnotic, screamy post-post-post-hardcore intro that melds into a slow, nasty, heavy vision of what pop music might sound like in Hell. This 11-track stygian brute of an album is a journey through modern dark music with tolling bells, blackened synth, diabolical noise interludes, drums as heavy as a mountain, and group vocals torn straight out of your best-worst nightmares.

The record’s first single, “Sam Alito’s Mom,” references the arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice known for his work in helping to overturn Roe v. Wade. The track is an all-out assault on an absolute piece of human dogshit with Greaves and Pearson’s vocals twisting around each other like cobras at a slow, growling pace of pure sunless devastation. This is music that has come from decades of in-the-trenches touring and experimentation, from Slayer to the Locust, Planet B’s avant-garde sci-fi hip-hop to Mr. Bungle’s bizarro metal orchestrations. In Dead Deities you feel this godless wave of collected history building up to birth a gruesome new monster.

In an age of regression, reversed social betterment, and the label “terrorist” slapped on anyone brave enough to oppose the men in power, this is protest music with bite and bark in lethal, equal doses. If the goal is us taking care of each in dangerous times, SATANIC PLANET has your back (while holding the gore-dripping, ripped-out spinal column of your enemy up to the blood-red sun). SATANIC PLANET’s Dead Deities is flag-burning, cross-toppling annihilation, all in the service of shaping a better, kinder, more livable world.