Deathstar’s debut album, The Triumph, was originally released in 2004 by Life Sentence Records. Due to the album’s popularity, it has been out of print for a few years and the band’s current label, Facedown Records, decided to help the fans out by re-releasing it – topped off with a re-mixed and re-mastered sound. The album also features new artwork by label staple Dave Quiggle and features the opposite perspective of the artwork used for Deathstar’s second album: We Are The Threat. (Instead of seeing the back of a gang of shady bravados as on …Threat, we see their dark faceless facades for Triumph). Deathstar’s instant success and loyal fan following can be attributed to the pure harsh hardcore the seven-piece band so accurately produced on their debut. The hardcore genre is plagued with splintering influencing factions of metal, dirty rock, and screamo that threaten to dilute the scene. Deathstar viciously crushed any skepticism that intense heavy-hitting songs pumped by messages of straight-edge unity and Christian values are dead. It is probably not a coincidence that the seventh track, “Suffocate Faster,” shares the same name as another hardcore purist band with whom Deathstar later went on to split an EP with. An old-school hardcore void and hunger may have once existed, but the resurgence and satisfaction started here.
