Last week, we were surprised to hear rumors that the recently reformed Carcass was in the studio working on a new album (their first since 1996’s Swansong). According to the original report by Blabbermouth, vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker and guitarist Bill Steer are being joined by drummer Matthias Voigt of Heaven Shall Burn (while guitarist Michael Amott and drummer Daniel Erlandsson weren’t participating due to their day jobs in Arch Enemy). Of course, none of this had been confirmed at the time. And while we’re still waiting for an official announcement on said album, we now know that at least one part of the rumor is NOT true.
This past Friday (November 30), Heaven Shall Burn took to Facebook to state that Voigt is not playing with Carcass, saying the following:
“Blabbermouth.net is really cool, but sometimes rumors are just rumors. HSB Matthias is 100% NOT playing for CARCASS!
Everybody in HSB maintains the status as devoted Carcass-fan and does not even dare to dream of being involved with this legend!”
We can’t imagine that Heaven Shall Burn would publicly deny these rumors if it was actually true. So that means we can officially rule out Voigt’s involvement for good. Granted, with an appearance at next year’s Maryland Deathfest confirmed, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that the UK extreme metal pioneers had more in the works. Plus Amott did confirm that neither him not Erlandsson were in Carcass anymore in numerous tweets, and even noted in a recent interview with Metal Forces that his former bandmates might be working on something. But is Walker and Steer really working on a new album? Finding out Voigt isn’t working with the group definitely puts a damper on the rumor. We did hear from a source that as far back as this past Summer, there was talk of a Carcass album being recorded, so we’re not quite ready to write off the whole thing yet.
