THE SHOTGUN SUICIDES are the new Chicago, Illinois based death metal band featuring former ENFORSAKEN guitarist Steve Stell.

In a message at the band's MySpace page, Stell states:

"When Enforsaken broke up in August of 2006, I took a few months off from the music thing. After 8 years of playing with and managing Enforsaken, I definitely needed a break.

I wasn't planning on starting a new project anytime soon, but in January 2007, I started playing around with some old Enforsaken riffs. Guitar stuff that never made it on to any of our albums... just for fun. It wasn't long before I found myself with a full albums worth of new material.

If I had made only a couple of songs back in January, they would have probably never seen the light of day. At best, they probably would have just shown up on a shitty MySpace page at some point.

However, I really like how these songs came out, so the only right thing to do is to release them as a full length album. So, that's what is going to happen!

The Shotgun Suicides is a complete death metal project. It's got a lot of early 90's metal influences like DISMEMBER, CARCASS, SENTENCED, GRAVE, PESTILENCE, IMPALED NAZARENE, DARKTHRONE, AUTOPSY, DEATH, KREATOR, EDGE OF SANITY, ENTOMBED etc... the metal music I grew up with. The stuff that was going on before Metalcore ruled the world, haha.

We've also incorporated a bit of the classic "Chainsaw guitar tone" made famous by Swedish death metal pioneers Entombed, CARNAGE, Dismember, etc. into our guitar sound. We've blended a modern high gain guitar tone with that old school chainsaw sound, and the end result is pretty damn cool.

Many of the riffs on the album were originally intended for Enforsaken, so I think fans of that band will probably enjoy what they hear in this new project. It's basically in the vein of Enforsaken with a little less melody, and a little more brutality. Straight up, to the point, death metal.

The album is called A Glorious Tragedy and will be released in the fall of 2007. I will be initially releasing this album in the USA on my own label, Soulside Records. I plan on licensing this album to Europe and Japan. Any interested labels can contact me directly. More updates and band contact info can be found at www.MySpace.com/TheShotgunSuicides."

Regarding the name choice of The Shotgun Suicides... "It's just a sick name I've had in my head for years. It is obviously a horrifying thing, so there you have it. When you think of a guy that has blown his brains against the wall, the image in your head isn't very pretty, is it? It's truly brutal and that's the way I feel about this project. No whimpering clean vocals or weak chorus' are alloud in this band, haha. There are no songs about holding hands and going to the movies with your girlfriend on this album. It's done in the spirit of how it was done back in the day. 100% raw, in your face, trend-free, Death Metal. Before the scene was flooded with cheap, paint by numbers, mallcore bullshit."

The Shotgun Suicides will enter Studio One (MICHAEL ANGELO BATIO, SOIL, ENFORSAKEN, JUNGLE ROT) in Racine, Wisconsin July 14th, 2007 to record A Glorious Tragedy. Chris Djuricic (November's Doom bassist, Studio One owner) will be producing and engineering the project.

Cover artwork for A Glorious Tragedy was recently completed by acclaimed metal/prog artist Mattias Noren (Evergrey, John Petrucci, Into Eternity, Kotipelto, Derek Sherinian.)

Underground artist Brian Guther created The Shotgun Suicides logo. Brian also did the Enforsaken logo way back in 1998.

Stell's former band, Enforsaken, were active in the metal scene from 1998 until their break up in 2006. Enforsaken released three critically acclaimed albums over their 8 year history: The Forever Endeavor (Century Media/Olympic 2004), Sinner's Intuition (Crash Music 2006) and Embraced By Misery (Lifeforce Records 2001).