Who Or What Is "The Death Gate"?

The truth is out there.

I received an email earlier today from Tim Price of Collison Course - one of the more prolific PR groups for heavy/alternative music in Australia - about something new coming up called the "The Death Gate". Price was very close-lipped about the finer details on the who and the what of this project; just that it was something new from a client of his. The public link he gave me shows an overly-detailed sci-fi/cosmic horror landscape with the words "The Death Gate Draws Near" shown and a timer counting down to 10am on Friday, June 30th.

You can check out the site for yourself at www.thedeathgate.com.

Now, at a first glance, the pictured artwork has Par Olofsson's name written all over the damn thing. Furthermore, the bands that purchase this Swedish designer's artwork or commission him for their album covers are normally proggy metalcore, extreme-metal or deathcore bands. So, if it is indeed Olofsson's work (and I'm 99% sure it is), my money's on this being a deathcore band.

Further adding to the mystery of this website, there's a highly edited audio file that plays through once when you head over to the website. Being the ever curious man that I am, I recorded the website's audio straight to my Mac's soundcard and fucked around with it in my DAW (Audacity, sadly, as I couldn't find my Pro Tools iLok). I changed the tempo without affecting the mono files pitch, reversed it, and ended up with the following ominous audio log of a man being trapped on the alien world pictured above.

Listen to the full piece of audio that I captured below:

[audio wav="http://kys-cdn.s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/kysadmn/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/20163028/Death-Gate-Recording-.wav"][/audio]

And this is probably the grimmest part of the whole thing right here:

[audio wav="http://kys-cdn.s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/kysadmn/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/20175924/Gravemind-I-Know-Its-You.wav"][/audio]

So it's an Aussie band, no doubt.

Yet as for which supposed deathcore band this release could possibly come from, let's do some process of elimination, shall we?

First off, it won't be Aversions Crown as they just put out a new album this year and there's no way in fuck that they're following up 'Xenocide' so soon. Same goes for Boris The Blade, who dropped 'Warpath' earlier this year and Brisbane's As Paradise Falls already announced their 'Digital Ruin' album, but that doesn't drop until July 21st. Plus, Thy Art Is Murder already revealed their new record last week too.

Now, I don't think this is coming from Queensland's A Night In Texas or Newcastle's Blind Oracle either, as both of those band's usual lyrical/thematic schticks is that of anti-theology and anti-religion; not science fiction. Unless they've changed up their game. Initiate Jericho did just drop a new tune called 'Vile' but this artwork and the "Death Gate" title don't fit that solid track and I very much highly doubt that Semper Fi or Iconoclast would be behind this one. I mean, it could very well be Melbourne's I, Valiance... but a hype-campaign like this isn't really their MO - they typically just drop tracks out of the blue a la 'The Blood Beneath My Nails'.

Look, that's enough speculation for now. I guess we'll find out what's the actual go with this "Death Gate" announcement come Friday, June 30th.

What and who do you think this is?

Also, this is what comes up when you share the site's URL: "WE SUFFER TOGETHER".