Acclaimed heavy death metal band Of Mice & Men have released a thrashing new track and video called “Obsolete,” which will appear on the band’s just-announced EP Timeless. The new EP will arrive next month on Friday, February 26 and marks the band’s first release with new label SharpTone Records.

The “Obsolete” video was completely animated in by iconic artist Derek Hess, who matches the song’s dark tones with his black and white coloring and eerie imagery. The song sees Of Mice & Men at perhaps their heaviest as ripping guitars and heart-pounding drums launch on the track right from the start before singer Aaron Pauley’s soul-shaking screams take over. From there, the track never quite lets up and the band is still roaring through the song almost all the way through its four-minute, thirty-second runtime.

Discussing the new EP, Pauley says the band got to work shortly before the lockdowns of 2020 and many of the songs deal with all the questions that followed once the lockdowns commenced. “There’s an old idiom about what you’re supposed to do when life gives you lemons,” explains Pauley. “Sadly, to disappoint, this wasn’t exactly that. We started writing this EP shortly before the initial lockdowns in spring of 2020, before we knew that our world was about to become a radically different place. A lot of these songs were born from a place of wondering how we’d fit into 2020 and beyond, both as adults in our 30s as well as a band that’s a decade into our existence.”

As for the new track itself, Pauley says “Obsolete” is essentially about questioning your own long-term value. “It’s a song about questioning how future-proof one is in the grand scheme of things, and acknowledging that maybe we aren’t at all,” says Pauley.” I think we all wonder, to a certain extent, whether or not we’ll fit into the future, or how we would, or what that would look like. Obsolescence is very prevalent in our lives. We see how quickly old phones become virtually useless, how quickly fads and trends come and go. It’s all too easy to ponder about when you’ll become a covered wagon, or a flip phone, or Myspace.”

To date Of Mice & Men have releases six full-length studio albums while touring alongside some of the biggest hard rock bands ever including Metallica, Slipknot, Linkin Park and A Day to Remember. In June of last year, the band issued a statement after its former singer Austin Carlile’s alleged sexual assault.

Photo Credit: Boston Lynn Schulz