After releasing their highly praised single “Silence In The Age Of Apes,” Avatar has given us yet another taste off their upcoming new album, Hunter Gatherer, with the new single “God Of Sick Dreams.” The track finds the band with no shortage of chugging riffs that revolve around some of the band’s catchiest choruses and heaviest moments to date.
Hunter Gatherer is set to drop on August 7, 2020, and it certainly appears that each of the ten tracks that will make up the new album does a fantastic job of showcasing the band’s raw aggression and can certainly stand on their own while still carrying out the thematic threads that make up the album as a whole.
Their bold manifesto, Hunter Gatherer, is an unflinchingly ruthless study of a clueless humankind’s ever-increasing velocity into an uncertain future, furthering the reach of the band’s always expanding dark roots. The forthcoming album is the darkest, most sinister version of the band yet, with deep studies of cruelty, technology, disdain, and deprivation. Hunter Gatherer is now available for pre-order here.
Earlier this year the band marked the end of the Avatar Country storyline with the heartfelt thank you video A Farewell To Avatar Country, concluding the realm created by the band and actualized in their epic featurette Legend Of Avatar Country: A Metal Odyssey that blew past a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign goal in less than 90 minutes. Released in 2018, Avatar Country debuted at #2 Indie, #4 Hard Music, #8 Rock, and #25 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
In 2019, Avatar reunited with producer Jay Ruston (Stone Sour, Slipknot, Anthrax) at Sphere Studios in Los Angeles, California, where the foundation for each song on Hunter Gatherer was laid with the band performing altogether, as they’d done only once before, on Hail the Apocalypse (2014). The old-school method of playing as one in the studio, more akin to how they are on stage, captured the essence of Avatar. Recorded entirely to two-inch tape, Hunter Gatherer exhibits everything that makes Avatar standouts in the vast, rich landscape of heavy metal’s past and present.
Through ambitious compositions and vibrant visual storytelling Avatar seamlessly blurs the line between sights and sounds. Avatar songs are new anthems for the ages, precision heat-seeking missiles targeting a cultural landscape ready for fresh songs to champion from a band with a giant persona to rally behind. The Avatar experience is challenging, daring, and altogether captivating.
