Melted Bodies - Bloodlines

Today, the band has debuted the new single "Bloodlines," a frenzied, frantic new track with massive groove laden riffs and incredibly memorable hooks that will grab hold of listeners with its sharp teeth and never let go.

“'Bloodlines' toils and tussles with the idea that all of us have unique pre-loaded behaviors, emotions and traits in our bloodlines. The past addictions, traumas, bodily shapes, love, nurture, disease etc. are passed down to us generation after family generation. I find myself longing for an emotional and physical tenderness that my mother held back on at points, paying for mistakes that my father perhaps made, a history of alcoholism and depression on both sides of my family etc. We spend a majority of our lives yearning to fix, understand or struggle with these genetics we never asked for.”

"We all have arrived at, or are approaching our own version of what I call 'The Inevitable Fork', and this overarching theme informs most of these songs in some way, much of which is very personal. Our bloodlines, mental health, past traumas, accomplishments, and regrets eventually lead us all to choose one of this fork’s many prongs to follow. Maybe we accept that it’s all imperfect, and we embrace our flaws to make anew or try again. Or perhaps we avoid, stall, numb, or overindulge. We’ve all been told “it’s now or never,” but yet we have heard that so many times. This stigma feeds our avoidance, unaccountability, and utter laziness. But rest assured ‘The Inevitable Fork’ is coming for us all whether we appreciate it or appall it.”

The Inevitable Fork is about the personal battle of survival vs. joy; our need to conform and stay afloat despite the pursuit of purpose. This is the next chapter for MELTED BODIES, but for a band designed around reflecting on the very idea of metal with glaring intensity, there’s much more to this story.

It’s 2015, Andy Hamm is staring at two of his favorite albums sitting above his record player - Cannibal Corpse’s The Bleeding, and Talking Heads’ More Songs about Buildings and Food. For the past decade, Andy toured the world as a founding member of indie band Local Natives, but was unexpectedly pushed out of the group by his former bandmates. Sitting alone, with unsatisfied ideas, he stared at those two albums and saw a template for a new project grounded in the music that inspired him in the first place. So he started writing.

A few months later, Andy met Scott McDonald at a screening of the Japanese cult film Why Don’t You Play in Hell? The two realized their shared love of horror and anime extends to music too. With Scott’s drumming background for Portland’s early 2000s Upon Beauty Rests, the two decided to meet up and explore Andy’s new ideas.

It quickly became clear that they needed to fill out the band, starting with bassist Houda Zakeri, a part of the LA punk scene for years with Holy Hydraulics, then ending with Ben Majoy, aka Diamondstein, electronic music producer and host of NTS Radio’s popular dark music show Night Shift. And with this, MELTED BODIES was formed.

Over the next few years, MELTED BODIES developed a reputation around SoCal for chaotic and unpredictable shows. Their difficult-to-pindown intensity led to as many mismatched billings as sold-out shows, supporting bands like Red Fang, Kikagaku Moyo, Horse the Band, Machine Girl, and Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum. Then as the world closed, 2020 became an ironically perfect year for Melted Bodies to release their breakthrough debut album, Enjoy Yourself.

Self-recorded in their depraved Inglewood rehearsal space, this album introduced their fresh contradiction to a global audience of like-minded multi-hyphenate metalheads, and quickly became one of Bandcamp’s top metal albums for the year, and a mainstay on many year-end lists, including a #1 from MetalSucks. Acclaimed for its new ideas in heavy music, Enjoy Yourself was labeled “the Most 2020 album we could have hoped for'' by journalists, due to its cheeky themes of consumerism, isolation, and police cannibalism.

A step removed from the sardonic nature of Enjoy Yourself, and now firmly established as a referential part of the metal music landscape, MELTED BODIES is releasing the final piece of their existentially and sonically heavy 3 EP series, The Inevitable Fork. Finally heard in its totality, these three volumes tell a different story from their breakthrough Enjoy Yourself.