Listen to “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” from The Mountain Goats
Photo by Jade Wilson
The Mountain Goats shared “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums,” the second single ahead of their forthcoming album, Dark in Here, which arrives June 25 via Merge Records. It will be the band’s third record released in a year.
“The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” has all of the dark, smoky qualities that one could hope for from a song with such an evocative title. The track’s subdued groove is rounded out by added harmonies from Susan Marshall and Reba Russell, whose credits include work with legends from Al Green to Lynyrd Skynyrd. With the band cranking out so much content over the past year, from their 10-songs-in-10-days creation Songs for Pierre Chuvin to the introspective Getting Into Knives, it feels natural for the band to keep looking inward for inspiration with the latest album.
Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes spoke to the single’s real-life inspiration in a statement:
John Darnielle concedes that “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” is an autobiographical one. While the lines, “In a new universe / trying to find the mask that fits me” would take on a newly literal connotation … the song is about going to metal shows at Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach, California, in the late ’80s, and more broadly, about seeking a sense of identity and community in strange and occasionally forbidding places.
Listen to “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” below, and keep scrolling to revisit a 2009 Mountain Goats performance from the Paste archives. You can preorder Dark in Here right here.