Exclusive Release: Stench Price Team up with Anthrax Founder Dan Lilker for ‘Living Fumes’

Artwork for Stench Price’s debut EP

If you thought an EP that features members from the globe’s purveyors of grind, thrash and death metal was going to be cut-throat, Siberian/French band Stench Price add an unlikely element to their rancid brand of grind ”“ the soothing warmth of bossa nova, samba and lounge.

Bassist Peter Shallmin says over email, “I desired to show a symbiosis of aggression and a steady flow, which is inherent in Bossa Nova and lounge music. In this maze of surprises and there is a balance of what could unexpectedly happen from the top of the cliff, raise emotions and peak, which is [then] interrupted in the sudden and most uncharacteristic way.”

Shallmin founded Stench Price early last year, along with guitarist Max Konstantinov, both of whom are part of Siberian metal act Kamlath and drummer Romain Goulon, who has previously been part of tech-death metal veterans Necrophagist. Says Shallmin, “We aspired to recall the spirit of the good old death/grindcore days, when we were all blown away by [bands like] Terrorizer, Defecation and Righteous Pigs — fun, raw, noisy, with errors and from one take.”

Stench Price EP’s lineup

Beyond the EP’s unpredictable pairing of grind and lounge, Stench Price features a collaboration on each of its six tracks. While Australian punk/metal vocalist Karina Utomo features on the whacked out first single “Pressure” which released last week, the EP also includes guest vocals by the likes of Max Phelps (from metal bands like Cynic and Death DTA), British vocalist Dave Ingram (previously part of death metal band Benediction and now with Dutch death metallers Hail of Bullets), American singer Shawn Knight (from post-punk band Child Bite) and prolific Swede singer-guitarist Rogga Johansson from death metallers Paganizer. Shallmin says the collaborations have come through networking, but adds that it’s not the hard part. “It is the least interesting part of the process of creating Stench Price ”“ to find, to get in touch and to arrange.”

Their second single “Living Fumes” is the opening track on the EP and features another legend, vocalist-bassist Dan Lilker, a co-founder of thrash veterans Anthrax and grindcore band Brutal Truth and currently the bassist of thrash band Nuclear Assault. Shallmin says of Lilker, who provides piercing vocals like few others, “This man lives and breathes extreme metal! He was the first artist whom I wanted to see in Stench Price and the very first track I offered [was] specially for him. I needed his acid of scream that I heard many years ago.”

For those of us who can’t quite decipher what Lilker is shredding his vocal chords about, Shallmin says that the vocalist explained the song as his “personal opinion of overpopulation from a misanthropic viewpoint.” Sounds brutal enough.

Listen to “Living Fumes” via Transcending Obscurity here