Ice Nine Kills Sidestep From Horror Into The Matrix with 'The Great Unknown'

For the past seven years, we've witnessed Ice Nine Kills take the horror world head-on with their music spread across The Silver Scream 1 & 2 albums, and their standalone single 'A Work Of Art' - the latter inspired by the Terrifier franchise - but its been confirmed the band are stepping away from those horror roots in favour of the twisted web of science fiction.

After taunting fans and critics with AI-generated posts on their socials, it seems the underlying intentions were supposed to generate backlash as the outfit toys with the concept of Artificial Intelligence and the digital world with their latest release, 'The Great Unknown', which takes inspiration from the movie, The Matrix.

Venture into the coded world as frontman Spencer Charnas and the band draw you in with a dialling phone and an enticing offer of 'Can you see, what I see / you're connected to catastrophe / do you know what I know / underneath the gun, could you be the one / to take the drug to pull the plug to reclaim all control / no time to kill so choose a pill'

And down the rabbit-hole we go... as Spencer belts out those delightful cleans for the chorus which weaves and flows through plenty of highs and bouncy drum beats retelling the story of the Wachowskis breakthrough cinematic hit - along with plenty of easter eggs and nods to the 1999 sci-fi classic. The breakdown leans more on the hard rock side of things before erupting into blastbeats galore with that tasty call of "Let's See You Dodge This!"

With this new phase commencing, do you think will we encounter more digital-age soundscapes from films such as Terminator, Event Horizon, Alien/Predator, Jurassic Park/World, The Fifth Element or even Transformers? Considering they've already dabbled with sci-fi on The Silver Scream 2 track 'F.L.Y', the possibilities of inspiration are endless...

Slick your hair back and re-enter the world of The Matrix with Ice Nine Kills providing the wicked soundtrack below.

Pre-save or stream the single here

Words by Paul 'Browny' Brown @brownypaul