Under Attack

Four years after Spiritual Genocide, the trio of Schmier, Mike Sifringer and Vaaver changed the way they made a record. Rather than booking a studio for a few weeks, they began after the 2015 summer festivals and, between September 2015 and January 2016, went in every few weeks to put down new songs and ideas between tour dates. Schmier said the many short sessions kept the ideas fresh and left time before the mix to change whatever they did not like, and that the longer gap since the last album had brought plenty of material with less pressure; he wanted to keep working that way. The drums were recorded with Martin Buchwalter at Gernhart Studios in Germany, and the remaining basic tracks, the mix and the mastering were done with V.O. Pulver at Little Creek Studios in Switzerland. All ten album songs are credited to Schmier and Sifringer. The Swiss guitarist Damir Eskić recorded three guest solos; he would later join the band as its second guitarist. Schmier had the cover in mind before the album had a title: the earth exploding, its continents forming the band's skull. In his reading the picture also shows the planet and its people as they are now, exposed to environmental damage, war and the turmoil of politics and the media, and the Hungarian artist Gyula Havancsák painted it once more. The first CD, a digipak, and the double LP both closed with two bonus tracks after the ten songs: Venom's "Black Metal", with Alex Camargo of Krisiun, and a new recording of "Thrash Attack" from the 1985 album Infernal Overkill. Nuclear Blast released the album on 13 May 2016, and it spent one week on the German albums chart at No. 68.