Legendary Thrashers HEATHEN Are In The Studio Working On A New Album!

Bay Area thrashers HEATHEN have announced that they are currently in the studio working on a new record, set to be their their first in almost a decade!

Evolution Of Chaos, Heathen’s most recent album and one of the finest comeback albums in thrash history, was released in 2009 and

The band have also published a video update from the studio, giving fans a preliminary sneak preview of what they’re working on. Check out the update featuring David White and Kragen Lum:

HEATHEN studio albums:

Breaking The Silence (1987)
Victims Of Deception (1991)
Evolution Of Chaos (2009)

Formed in 1984, Heathen was part of the first wave of Bay Area thrash bands that helped establish a genre of heavy metal that remains popular to this day. The band gained initial success with their first album Breaking the Silence, released on Combat Records in 1987. Driven by the riffs and harmonic structure provided by guitarist Lee Altus and the memorable vocals of David White, the album showcased Heathen’s signature sound, mixing aggression and melody. Just prior to the Breaking the Silence tour, drummer Darren Minter joined Heathen’s line-up, bringing a more powerful backbone to the band.

Heathen recorded their follow-up album, Victims of Deception for Roadrunner Records in 1991. The album further established Heathen’s unique identity in the thrash scene with more complex arrangements and improved production, and continued to grow the band’s fan base, allowing them to tour Europe for the first time with contemporaries like Sepultura and Sacred Reich.

An unexpected hiatus followed as founding member Lee Altus was invited to join the German industrial metal band Die Krupps and later, thrash pioneers Exodus. Heathen never disbanded however, and recorded a number of cover songs that were eventually released as the Recovered album in 2004.

Heathen returned to the stage in 2001 to play the Thrash of the Titans benefit show in San Francisco, reigniting their dedicated fan base, and resulting in numerous offers for the band to play key European festivals in 2002 and 2003.

The band returned to the Bay Area to write new material and released a demo in 2005, which was shopped to various labels and distributed to fans via the internet. The demo became so popular in the underground metal scene that the band even toured Europe in support of it. Soon afterward, Heathen signed a deal with Mascot Records and began writing more material for their third full length album.

In 2007, guitarist Kragen Lum joined the band, solidifying the core of the current line-up. For the next two years, Heathen wrote and recorded their most recent album, The Evolution of Chaos, creating what some reviewers called one of the best thrash albums of the decade. Drawing critical acclaim from all over the world, Evolution of Chaos was released in 2009/2010, debuting strongly on metal charts around the world and even placing at #75 on the German popular music chart. By the end of the 2010 the album topped many press and fans “Top 10” lists and landed at number 37 on the CMJ Year-End Loud Rock chart, above such metal greats as Dio, Halford and Lamb of God.