In the audio interview below, Zoran Theodorovic of Capital Chaos TV chats with Pete Sandoval of Terrorizer, subjects discussed include: Slayer, the new album, hurricanes and blast beats.

Just past the nine minute mark, Sandoval is asked whether he ever considered auditioning for Slayer or Megadeth when their drum positions opened up. His reply, "I think I would miss playing the blast beat. Slayer has no blast beats, that's why I didn't think about joining them."

Caustic Attack, the imminent new full-length from long-running American grindcore unit Terrorizer, is streaming in its inexorable entirety. Released worldwide via The End Records on October 12th, the band's first studio offering in six years was produced by Jason Suecof (Deicide, All That Remains, Kataklysm, Battlecross) at Audiohammer Studios in Sanford, Florida and features the apocalyptic cover art of Timbul Cahyono (Rotting Corpse, Pyrexia).

Before Pete Sandoval recorded Morbid Angel’s first album, 1989’s Altars Of Madness, he performed on two demos and a split album with his original band Terrorizer. Today, the group’s 1989 full-length debut World Downfall is still considered a pinnacle for death metal and grindcore, featuring impossibly fast blast-beats and double-bass drumming along with a blitzkrieg attack by late guitarist Jesse Pintado (Napalm Death), and ex-vocalist Oscar Garcia (Nausea). The 1989 lineup was rounded out by Sandoval and then-fellow Morbid Angel bandmate David Vincent on bass.

Over the next 23 years, Sandoval took time between Morbid Angel albums to continue working with Terrorizer, recording two more cataclysmic full-lengths, 2006’s Darker Days Ahead and 2012’s Hordes Of Zombies. And now, another six years down the burning highway, Terrorizer is back with Caustic Attack, their heaviest and most eclectic album to date.

Terrorizer started working on Caustic Attack in 2014, but before they could lay down a single bar of music, Sandoval had to make sure he was healthy enough to work on a new album - which was far from a sure thing. Rewind to 2009 when Sandoval’s suffered a severe back injury caused by decades of Olympic-class death metal drumming. After seeing different doctors and exploring his options, Sandoval opted for invasive surgery to repair the deteriorated discs between interlocking vertebrae in his spine.

By 2013, Sandoval was feeling pretty good, so he got together with multi-instrumentalist Lee Harrison, who played on Malevolent Creation’s 1989 demo a year before giving birth to metal veterans Monstrosity, which have released five full-length albums to date. In 2007, Lee joined up with fabled Crimson Glory singer, Midnight, with whom he worked until the vocalist died in 2009. Lee has also played guitar with Obituary on tour in South America in 2012. Now, he’s deadly serious about his role in Terrorizer, but at first playing with Sandoval was more like a hobby.

“We started playing some songs just for fun,” Sandoval explains. “We did some of the World Downfall songs, and then we learned a few cover songs and we did our first show as a party. That’s how everything started.”

Feeling confident and comfortable again behind the kit, Sandoval invited Sam Molina, who played with Harrison in Monstrosity, to join them on bass, and the trio started working on songs for Caustic Attack. A violently explosive album for increasingly turbulent times, Caustic Attack is the sound of a world nearing apocalypse. The songs conjure images of warplanes on bombing runs, giant tanks obliterating small villages and the endless rattle of machine guns mowing down everyone in sight.

Sandoval has long been known as one of the fastest players in death metal - the pioneer of blast beats - and he doesn’t hold back on Caustic Attack. At the same time, even the fastest songs are tighter and more precise than Terrorizer have ever been thanks to veteran producer Jason Suecof, who’s painstaking method of recording showcases Sandoval and his team at peak capacity.

The proof is in the pummeling. There are flesh-shredding grindfests like "Turbulence," "Caustic Attack," and "Poison Gas Tsunami," each of which swoops down, destroys, and depart in under-two-minutes. Then, there are the nearly five-minute-long tracks, including "Infiltration" - which slows to a thunderous breakdown before ramping back up to hyper-speed - and "Wasteland," a global conflagration with undeniable guitar hooks and a lethal mid-song chug that reveals previously unexplored diversity and depth.

Now that Sandoval is devoting all his time and effort to Terrorizer (he left Morbid Angel in 2013), he plans to tour extensively and then record another album. The six-year curse is officially broken. “It feels so great to be back playing every day,” Sandoval says. “I worked really hard on my recovery and all that work is really paying off now because when I play these songs I feel the same way I did in 1990 or 2000. I feel young again and I can play with no problem. And that’s hard to do because this new album has a lot of changes, double-bass, fast blast beats. You name it.” [words by Jon Wiederhorn]

Tracklisting:

"Turbulence"
"Invasion"
"Conflict And Despair"
"Devastate"
"Crisis"
"Infiltration"
"The Downtrodden"
"Trench Of Corruption"
"Sharp Knives"
"Failed Assassin"
"Caustic Attack"
"Poison Gas Tsunami"
"Terror Cycles"
"Wasteland"

Full album stream:

"Caustic Attack":

"Invasion":

Terrorizer lineup:

Pete Sandoval - drums
Lee Harrison - guitars
Sam Molina - bass/vocals