Wastelander

Wastelander emerged from the decaying industrial sprawl of Lansing, MI, a locale the band's central figures portray as roughly equivalent to hell's seventh circle. Those figures consist of vocalist, guitarist, and bassist Matt War, formerly of Harbinger, alongside guitarist and backing vocalist Sean "Xaphan" Peters, whose prior credits include Summon, Lucifer's Hammer, and Dark Psychosis. The group's 2008 debut album Wardrive, recorded with session drummer Ian "Pit Viper" Sugierski of Superchrist, channels that outlook through a raw strain of black metal modeled on Venom's earliest recordings from 1981 or 1982, all housed beneath cover imagery that displays a naive sketch of an absurdly menacing war tank.