Miss May I are heading into their next chapter at full force, announcing eighth studio album ‘No Place For Me’ for release on October 2 via Solid State Records and dropping new single ‘Death Threat’.
The Ohio metalcore veterans have also gone completely DIY for the accompanying video. Vocalist Levi Benton conceived the concept, with William Story producing and directing, while the band used their own properties and whatever materials they could get their hands on to bring it together.
‘Death Threat’ goes somewhere considerably darker. Built around heavyweight grooves and the kind of anthemic punch Miss May I have spent nearly two decades refining, the track deals with the damage caused when somebody takes another person’s weaknesses and turns them into weapons. Rather than ignoring destructive habits, the song works towards recognising them, confronting them and eventually reaching some kind of clarity.
That sense of uncomfortable self-examination runs throughout ‘No Place For Me’. For Benton, making the album involved finally putting words around thoughts and emotions he had carried for years. The record traces that process from where those feelings began through to what he discovered about himself while writing and where he finds himself now.
It marks another significant point in a career that began back in 2007. Miss May I broke through with 2012’s ‘At Heart’, which reached number 32 on the Billboard 200, before ‘Deathless’ and ‘Shadows Inside’ both landed inside the Top 10 of the Billboard Top Independent Albums and Top Rock Albums charts.
Their 2022 album ‘Curse Of Existence’ continued the band’s combination of thrash-influenced metalcore, hardcore grooves and melody, while years spent touring alongside Killswitch Engage, Parkway Drive and Motionless In White have helped build an international audience and hundreds of millions of streams.
‘No Place For Me’ now becomes both their eighth full-length and their first album for Solid State Records, with Benton, drummer Jerod Boyd, bassist Ryan Neff and guitarist Elisha Mullins pushing the emotional unease at the heart of their music firmly to the surface.
Miss May I will take the new material on the road later this year, co-headlining The Perpetual Iron Tour across North America with Born of Osiris in November and December. Convictions and Downswing complete the bill.
After almost two decades of metalcore, ‘Death Threat’ finds Miss May I less interested in outrunning the darker stuff than dragging it into the light and dealing with it head-on.
‘No Place For Me’ arrives October 2 via Solid State Records.
