Ontario thrashers Spread the Disease return to life on their first album of dense, hellish hardcore in nearly three decades.
Release date: July 10, 2026 | Hypaethral Records | Instagram | Bandcamp
“Blackened hardcore” is one of those genre collisions that just makes sense. Black metal’s infamous lack of low end is complimented well by hardcore punk’s gleeful scuzziness and speed. Oathbreaker, Infant Island, Portrayal of Guilt – the list of quality practitioners in this style goes on. So what’s Ontario group Spread the Disease to do after playing no small part in the genre’s inception with 1998’s We Bleed From Many Wounds and 1999’s The Sheer Force of Inertia when reuniting for a new album in 2026? Do they take things back to basics, or do they pull influence from the groups that followed in their wake?
Thankfully, Spread the Disease don’t vary too far from the template they set forth in the late ’90s. The music on The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering. (damn, what an album title) picks up right where they left off, with dense, atmospheric black metal-inspired tremolo guitar and avalanching drums punctuated by shorter interludes to break up the tracklist. Opener “Light Opaque” begins with a digitized burst of noise, setting the listener up to expect the unexpected – and when the song rushes in proper, it’s anything but predictable. The hammering percussion, death metal-inspired riffs, and neck-popping shrieking from Post immediately drag the listener to hell (this is a positive). Halfway through, the punk influence shows itself in the form of a breakdown that wrings the guitar melodies and harmonies for all of their worth, instantly getting the head bobbing and the hardcore kids two-stepping. I hesitate to use the word ‘fun’ to describe music so relentlessly dark and crushing, but STD pull off this balance exceptionally well after so many years.
First single “Gods and Politics” opens with an instrumental that sounds like it could have landed on a Mastodon album circa 2006, before the molten d-beat drums take over like a mutated, firebreathing Fall of Efrafa. When the band works the intro back into the closing moments of the track, it feels holistic and satisfying. Similarly, second single “Indoctrinated” opens with doomy guitar work reminiscent of Slayer‘s old chestnut “South of Heaven” before the punk pace picks up again, with Post sounding especially brutal on the mic. The blistering black metal sections effortlessly sit alongside; it can’t be overstated how organically Spread the Disease bring these sounds together. The brief breakdown that follows – complete with triplet bass drumming and a high-pitched guitar line – is just sublime, recurring again at the end in a full-circle moment.
The music on The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering. may not be ‘catchy’ in a traditional sense, but the band’s endeavor to make each song work as its own mini-suite – each main song is five minutes or longer, in stark contrast to most hardcore-adjacent stuff – gives them space to breathe and develop ideas in an unhurried (but plenty fast) way. “Summer Wanes” wastes no time jumping into its frenzied smashing, but the way it evolves over its runtime holds enough surprises to keep the listener on their toes: the sudden drop into a sludgy, 6/8 time signature two minutes in feels like accidentally slipping off a cliff into the roiling ocean below. Spread the Disease cede the floor to a repeated melody in the last two minutes of the song, progressing from a low riff to an octave harmony between the guitars to a synth reprise – all without seeming gimmicky or tryhard. Even with such a long hiatus separating this album from their original run, the band members know exactly how to make their essentially ugly music sound dynamic.
“The Blight in Their Eyes” opens with frontman Shane Post screaming into the abyss a capella before the rest of the band crashes in, the rhythm alternating between half-time double bass salvos, quadruple-time blastbeats, and a lurching stomp with equal adroitness. Two minutes before the end, the guitar begins to squeal as the grinding slows down, concluding in a bank of ringing feedback reminiscent of the titular blight of the eyes: looking around frantically but unable to see anything in the darkness. It’s a brutal way to round out the ‘main’ songs on the album, as the three-minute “Outro” that follows cools things down to a simmer to let the listener off the hook without a spiked heart rate. The efficacy of these interlude tracks will likely be debated among the heavy music faithful, but they provide a necessary respite from the relentless doom and gloom of the material here.
All in all, Spread the Disease prove they have gas in the tank and something to say in 2026 with The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering.. The performances are tight (despite what sounds like overly-MIDIfied drums), the production is suffocating, and the music itself is killer. Whether you’re wearing corpse paint or a Nails shirt, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here.
