It’s a metal and hardcore punk collaboration that will have fans keeping a close eye on the release date. Major players from a handful of punk rock’s best known bands are coming together in an alliance and no one’s exactly sure what to expect. Teenage Time Killer started as a side project for Corrosion of Conformity’s Mike Dean and Reed Mullin, and just kept growing as more and more big names climbed aboard.

Associated Press

Foo Fighters founder and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl is the latest guest star on the project. He’s had his hands full lately ahead of an expected new Foo Fighters album, and it’s not clear exactly what he’ll be doing for Teenage Time Killer, but he’s got a lot of good company. Dean and Mullin have also brought Slipknot and Stone Sour lead singer Corey Taylor and Lamb of God main man Randy Blythe on board for a slightly harder edge. Former Dead Kennedys lead singer and current spoken word artist Jello Biafra will perform comedian John Cleese’s poem “Ode to Hannity” on the Teenage Time Killer record. It also includes partnerships with Black Flag’s Keith Morris, ex-Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri, Soulfly’s Max Cavalera, Neil Fallon from Clutch, Fear’s Lee Ving and a slew of other rock names from The Misfits, Municipal Waste and Red Fang, among others.

It’s hard to imagine this project being anything other than a hit with hardcore fans of the genre. It has way too many iconic metal and punk names to crash and burn. The question is, will it stand up across the board? The great thing about collaborations of multiple artists is that they introduce even the casual listeners to names they’re not as familiar with and win new followers for some of the old standards. Teenage Time Killer is definitely a supergroup to watch this year.

If it sounds like Dean and Mullin have taken on an unusually big amount of talent for one album, they’re aware of it, too. While talking to New York radio station WFMU, Mullin said that the project wasn’t originally going to be as involved, but got bigger as more people signed on. “We had all these other folks that want to participate,” Mullin says. “It’s a very good mixture of old hardcore punk, punk and metal stuff…people are going to be pleasantly surprised. It’s pretty cool.”