Daath

Dååth, whose name derives from the Hebrew term for knowledge and is pronounced to rhyme with goth, emerged as an American death metal outfit based in Georgia. Guitarist Eyal Levi and keyboardist-vocalist Mike Kameron assembled the group after their prior Dirt Nap effort dissolved. The resulting style fused American technical death metal with thrash and prog metal beneath gritty vocals. Their first full-length, Futility, arrived independently in 2003. A series of singles and split releases preceded the 2007 album The Hinderers. By the time The Concealers appeared on Roadrunner in 2009, Sean Farber and Kameron had given way to vocalist Sean Zatorsky and additional guitarist Emil Werstler. This configuration secured a distribution and promotion arrangement with Century Media for the Roadrunner catalog, leading to the self-titled Dååth in 2010. An almost completely refreshed sextet featuring the returning Levi and Zatorsky alongside established members surfaced in 2023; after several singles, the ensemble issued the full-length The Deceivers in 2024.

Childhood friends Levi, Kameron, and Farber first united as students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Operating initially under the name Dirtnap, the three departed campus to pursue the project full-time and eventually resettled in Atlanta. There they refined a singular extreme-metal approach that merged death, thrash, and black metal with symphonic and electronic accents. Drawing from Kabbalistic teachings without adherence to any single faith, the musicians viewed their moniker as signifying knowledge beyond common reach and sought to merge visceral grooves with substantive intent, describing the band as a “doorway between instinct and intellect.” An early-2000s album caught the ear of guitarist-turned-producer James Murphy, whose résumé includes work with Disincarnate, Obituary, and Death. After he tracked ten songs with them in 2005, the six-piece signed with Roadrunner in spring 2006 and returned to the studio alongside Murphy. The lineup now comprised lead guitarist Emil Werstler, bassist Jeremy Creamer, and drummer Kevin Talley, the latter having supplanted Matt Ellis, with further engineering contributions from Colin Richardson and Andy Sneap. The Hinderers, whose thirteen tracks each corresponded to a point on an inverted Kabbalistic Tree of Life, surfaced in March 2007 and was followed months later by the three-song tour EP Dead on the Dancefloor. Touring ensued with Job for a Cowboy and the Acacia Strain, after which the band crossed to the U.K. alongside Unearth. A strategically timed batch of singles preceded the 2008 arrival of The Concealers, now featuring Zatorsky and Werstler in place of Kameron; while supporting the record worldwide, the group released the four-track The Concealers B-Sides. The 2010 self-titled album, issued jointly by Roadrunner and Century Media, was co-produced and co-engineered by Mark Lewis and Levi. Following subsequent tours the band went dormant until 2023, when a new sextet anchored by Zatorsky and Levi began issuing singles, culminating in the May 2024 release of The Deceivers on Metal Blade.