With a penchant for the groove-driven side of the death metal spectrum, No Echo would like to welcome Iron Front to our website. Also injecting East Coast hardcore grit to their attack, the Bay Area-based quintet has been around for a few years, releasing several demos and singles, an EP, before inking a deal with Creator-Destructor Records (Sunami, Mutually Assured Destruction) who re-relased the band's 2024 debut album, Hooked.
Iron Front started this year off by surprise-dropping a new EP, Show of Force, which shares its name with an obscure hardcore band from Queens I was friends with back in the '90s, but I digress.
Featuring family-friendly cover art by Braindeadzine, the EP was recorded by Zack Ohren (Deeds of Flesh, Suffocation), and with features guest appearances by members of Boltcutter and Forced to Suffer:
With Show of Force out now, and future live appearances being worked out, the Iron Front guys are clearly busy. But the California death metal crew still took some time out to take part in No Echo's ongoing Our Biggest Influences series to show love to some of the bands and records that helped fuel their sound.
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Sepultura, Chaos A.D. (1993)
"If there’s any legacy metal band that’s ripe to be the next to be picked up by the hardcore kids, it’s this era of Sepultura. We love all their classic albums, but these days we look more towards Chaos A.D., specifically, as an inspiration.
"It’s got a great balance of fast angry riffs groovy breakdowns that would appeal to current audiences. This was a very important record for us growing up, we used to cover 'Territory' at every show we did back when we were kids."
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Suffocation, Pierced From Within (1995)
"The peak of technical riffing in death metal, in my opinion. Not only a pioneer of low IQ slams, but also a group of incredibly skilled musicians and it really shows. A serious contender for GOAT death metal band."
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Cold as Life, Born to Land Hard (1999)
"While most of us grew up as metalheads, we have a lot of love for classic hardcore and punk. This record just sounds so mean and nasty in a way that many other bands struggle to capture on a studio album, even more impressive is the fact that all the songs were recorded live in the studio all together. It has this incredibly angry and gritty vibe to it that I really respect."
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Dying Fetus, Destroy the Opposition (2000)
"A lot of stuff that bands are doing these days, Dying Fetus has been doing for decades. Quite possibly the swaggest death metal has ever been, this record has served as a blueprint for streetwise death metal for many years."
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Corpse Pile, Hardgore Deathmetal (2024)
"There’s a lot more older music I could point to as being influences on us, but truthfully a large part of our sound is inspired by the crossover between the death metal and hardcore scenes over the past several years.
"Corpse Pile is one of the best to do it right now, and Hardgore Deathmetal is a real ass-beater. The riffs are dope, the vocals are brutal, and the snare is nice and pingy, everything you’d want on a current slam release."
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Gojira, Terra Incognita (2001)
"Another of our favorites from when we were growing up, Terra Incognita and The Link had a bigger impact on our sound than most would think. They showed us that you could mess around with rhythmic and some light progressive elements in death metal and still have it sound sick and groovy.
"Even though Gojira massively blew up after these albums and made it to the global stage this summer, I would still consider both of their early albums as well as the Godzilla demos to be a bit under appreciated. If this album had a slightly different style of production, I think it would fit in pretty well with a lot of death metal coming out today."
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Show of Force is streaming everywhere and also available on 7” vinyl via Creator-Destructor Records.
Iron Front on social media: X | Instagram
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