Inter Arma are about to return with their first album in five years. The Richmond extreme metal doomsayers will release New Heaven on April 26, eight days after they perform the album in full at Utrecht’s Roadburn festival. They went through four bassists during the album’s creation before landing on Joel Moore, a lifelong guitarist who’d never played bass in a band before.

Today they’re sharing New Heaven’s opener and title track, a seven-minute hellfest that came about when drummer and songwriter TJ Childers challenged himself to write a comically discordant riff and ended up loving it. Here’s what he said about the new LP:

New Heaven is the culmination of four years worth of adversity ranging from near death experiences, multiple member changes and of course a global pandemic. It marks a new chapter for us musically as we feel we’ve taken our songwriting to places we’ve never explored before. We’re excited to have come out of the madness relatively unscathed and feel as though we’ve created something completely unique that will stand apart in the sometimes homogenous extreme music community.

Hear “New Heaven” below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “New Heaven”
02 “Violet Seizures”
03 “Desolation’s Harp”
04 “Endless Grey”
05 “Gardens In The Dark”
06 “The Children the Bombs Overlooked”
07 “Concrete Cliffs”
08 “Forest Service Road Blues”

New Heaven is out 4/26 on Relapse. Pre-order it here.