Austrian longest running death metallers DARKSIDE have decided to pre-release a song from their upcoming album in memoriam to the late SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman. The song is audibly inspired by the musical output of the Californian thrash metal originators.

Vocalist Wolf states: “Back in 2000 we had the great honor to share the stage with Slayer, one of the main influential forces of Darkside´s career, I assume there never was a member of Darkside that wouldn´t count Jeff and Co. amongst his idols. We have recorded this track for our new album and everyone can hear that it was influenced by the four slaymen from California. Therefor we have decided to pre-release this track in honor to Jeff, even if for a sad reason, but simply to show our respect for Jeff´s musical heritage. The song is called ‘Hosts Of Depravity’ and is part of the conception album about the life of Madeleine de la Palud that we have recorded earlier this year. The song talks about part of the feelings and thoughts of the main character of the story. Me myself, I was lucky enough to meet Slayer and of course Jeff a few times on different occasions and this is why it is extremely important to me to present this tune in honor to Jeff and preserve the memory about his musical output as one of the driving forces behind my whole music experiences.”

Hear the song at this location.

‘Hosts Of Depravity’ was recorded partly in Czech Republic and in Italy, mixed and mastered in Italy, just as the whole album. There is also a contribution by a guest musician on this track,

Wolf about that: “When we entered Shaark Studio in February this year to record bass, guitars and vocals for Inferno, it was inevitable that some of our old friends would drop by to pay us a visit e.g. Bruno, former bass player of KRABATHOR, nowadays mainman at Hypnos. We are having a great friendship since almost 25 years, so it was more than obvious to ask him about some contribution to our album. Bruno has recorded some backing vocals for the title track of the new album and HYPNOS' live guitarist, Vlasa Urbanec, who shared the stage with us with his own band SIX DEGREES OF SEPERATION, ended up to record three solos for Inferno, one of them being the second part of the solo section for ‘Hosts Of Depravity’, while the first part of the solo was executed by Pylath, our guitarist. I think both solos came out really great and catches the atmosphere of the song perfectly."