NORMA JEAN recently announced their ninth album “Deathrattle Sing For Me”, out August 12th via Solid State Records. Today, they have shared the video for “Spearmint Revolt“.
“There is no editing stage”, says singer Cory Brandan about the track. “Every edit is a new creation, and some songs write themselves. This song was thrown out, retrieved, reworked, and thrown out again a few times. After almost abandoning it completely, it wasn’t the song that needed to change — but our view of what kind of song it truly was. There is a lot of [guitarist] Grayson [Stewart] on this album, and I’ve never seen him more determined to make a statement than with what he writes than with this track. This song ended up coining a new common phrase in the Norma Jean camp: ‘It had to be off the album before it could be on it.’ Abandoning this song forced us to make it work in a much more desperate way”.
The song also factors into the album as a whole in two massive ways, actually. Brandan finishes: “The title and chorus lyrics are a tribute to the ’90s music we grew up with and how some bands would make some of their heaviest songs and name them something that forces you to view it differently. It seemed fitting for what this song went through, and it ended up naming the album: ‘Deathrattle Sing For Me‘”.
Stewart weighs in, saying: “I wanted this song to be an example of how much ground Norma Jean can cover within a single song — while still making it sound cohesive”.
Norma Jean — rounded out by Grayson Stewart [lead guitar], Clay Crenshaw [guitar/bass], Matt Marquez [drums], and Michael Palmquist [guitar/bass] — plunge into unparalleled emotional depths on the new album. The band unearthed a searing signature style on “O’ God, the Aftermath” in 2005. They struck up a creative partnership with iconic producer Ross Robinson on the seminal “Redeemer” [2007] and “The Anti Mother” [2008].
The latter notably boasted appearances by Chino Moreno of Deftones and Page Hamilton of Helmet. Following the acclaimed “Meridional” [2010], “Wrongdoers” [2013] represented a critical high watermark with a 9-out-of-10 score from Rock Sound and 9-out-of-10 score from Outburn. On the heels of “Polar Similar” [2016], they reached another level on “All Hail” [2019].
In a perfect 5-star review, New Noise Magazine raved, “All Hail is yet another momentous accomplishment on their part” while Kerrang! attested, “All Hail’s ambition and execution is worthy of worship”. Along the way, they toured with everyone from Rob Zombie and Korn to Mastodon, Lamb of God, and more.
During 2021, they recorded what would become “Deathrattle Sing For Me” with longtime collaborator Jeremy SH Griffith. They nodded to inspirations as diverse as Alice In Chains’ “Dirt”, The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Siamese Dream”, and the sample-and-riff onslaught of White Zombie’s “La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1”.
