The new self-titled fourth album from Knoxville, Tennessee death metallers WHITECHAPEL sold around 9,200 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 47 on The Billboard 200 chart. The band's previous CD, "A New Era Of Corruption", opened with around 10,600 units back in June 2010 to land at No. 43.

"Whitechapel" was released on June 19 via Metal Blade Records. The CD was engineered and mixed by Mark Lewis (THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, DEVILDRIVER), who also handled production duties alongside the band. The artwork was created by Aaron Marsh of Forefathers Group with art direction provided by WHITECHAPEL.

The first single from "Whitechapel", entitled "Hate Creation", is available for streaming below.

"Whitechapel" track listing:

01. Make It Bleed
02. Hate Creation
03. (Cult)uralist
04. I, Dementia
05. Section 8
06. Faces
07. Dead Silence
08. The Night Remains
09. Devoid
10. Possibilities Of An Impossible Existence

A press release states: "Having spent several years lauded as one of the frontrunners in their genre, in 2012 WHITECHAPEL stand as a defining force in contemporary heavy music. Building dramatically on the trademarked bludgeon of their first three releases, with WHITECHAPEL the Tennessean sextet have inarguably delivered their most intense, dynamic, and downright hostile record to date. Drenched in atmospheric darkness, the record is also rife with gripping melodies that drag the listener in to the tumult, willing or otherwise, and across its ten tracks it is infused with an emotional depth that pointedly separates the band from the plethora of two-dimensional mosh-starters that have sprung up in their wake."

In a recent interview with Capital Chaos, WHITECHAPEL guitarist Zach Householder stated about the band's the forthcoming CD, "Everybody always says, 'Do stuff more like 'The Somatic Defilement' [2007] or 'This Is Exile' [2008], but every album, we always try to do it differently for a change." He added, "[The new material] probably has some faster stuff like 'A New Era Of Corruption' [2010], but it's definitely got some slower stuff, too. It's groovier and it's got more hooks and catches. If you're a 'The Somatic Defilement' fan, you're gonna like it, but if you're expecting [another] 'The Somatic Defilement', you're not gonna get it. It's still gonna be heavy. It's WHITECHAPEL. It's gonna be angry; it's very pissed off. I don't know what else to say… It's us trying to do it in our own way as opposed to us trying to live up to what people's expectations are of us. We don't wanna alienate our fans by any means. It's just that we want them to sit there and go, 'OK, well, this band does this one thing, and they do it differently every time.' So I guess you either like it or you hate it. Even so, if you do it differently the next time, you might gain more fans."

WHITECHAPEL will be a part of this summer's Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, which starts June 30.

Photo credit: Adam Elmakias