Celebrating their 25th year in 2025, Car Bomb will release their latest EP, Tiles Whisper Dreams, on August 1. This is the band’s first new music since their 2019 album, Mordial. They have already dropped “Paroxysm,” the first single from the record, along with a visualizer video. Watch it below and read more from the band.
Pre-order Tiles Whisper Dreams here:
https://carbomb.bandcamp.com/album/tiles-whisper-dreams
“Paroxysm” reveals a revitalized Car Bomb, seemingly chomping at the bit with all the fury of a band half its age. “This is our first release since before COVID,” states guitarist Greg Kubacki, “and we really tried to put our 100% into these songs.”
In under 3 minutes, the aptly-titled “Paroxysm” delivers a barrage of semi-automatic drum-fire and viscous guitars, conjoined in inscrutable patterns. Vocalist Michael Dafferner mostly roars but lets his singing voice shine in one brief, glistening moment. The song is about “the never-ending struggle with power and control,” he says.
In a genre built on shock and awe, it is tough to be shocking or awe-inspiring these days. With metal in its sixth decade, making an impact is an increasingly difficult feat. The ceiling is red with the blood of straight-line shredders futilely competing for the attention of desensitized ears. Car Bomb is that rare metal band that has found a pathway through the ceiling – a wormhole, if you will – and has occupied a position of radical transcendence for a quarter-century now. In its 25 years of existence, the New York City-area quartet has been sculpting its own signature sound and cementing its identity as an outlier, above the fray, inspiring a legion of younger musicians in the process. Car Bomb’s sound is that of perpetual transformation: a spiraling flurry of rhythm and texture that congeals, fleetingly, into planet-pulverizing death-grooves and fragments of haunting melodies. Baffling rhythmic modulations and deep-space guitar effects appear to warp time completely. Disorientation is the rule, not the exception.
Kubacki puts it like this: “When someone asks me what we sound like, I always ask them ‘what’s the heaviest band you listen to?’ and then I say it’s either 10x, 100x, or 1,000x crazier than that, depending on their answer. We aspire to create our own style of heavy music by bending everything: the notes, time signatures, tempos, sonic quality of the guitars, etc. We’re always pushing and pulling everything, ripping ideas apart and then squashing them back together. And as a result our songs might sound chaotic at first, but as they progress the patterns, grooves, and motifs embedded inside all of the mangling and warping will reveal themselves and evolve in unexpected ways. Most people won’t get that deep into our stuff and will just hear a pile of noise, which is fine with us. We’re creating the kind of music we want to hear and that’s all we care about.”
One could spend weeks trying to calculate the twists and turns of Car Bomb’s compositions but, zoom out, surrender to the chaos, and there is another experience to be had: complete catharsis. While there is joy in trying to dissect the elite chops and maniacal arrangements that Dafferner, Kubacki, bassist Jon Modell, and drummer Elliot Hoffman put forth, there is also joy in reveling in the ineffable, unknowable spaces their confounding music explores. The fact that this band continues to explore, 25 years in, makes it one of the real treasures of today’s metal scene.
Drum tracking and vocal pre-production for Tiles Whisper Dreams were done at Silvercord Studio in Queens, New York, the studio owned by Joe Duplantier of Gojira. Kubacki describes Silvercord as “our home away from home.” Guitars, bass, and vocals were recorded at the band members’ respective home studios. The album was mixed by Johann Meyer at Silvercord and mastered by Grammy Award winner Ted Jensen (The Eagles, Green Day).
Tiles Whisper Dreams tracklisting:
01 Blindsides
02 Paroxysm
03 Tiles Whisper Dreams
Car Bomb will tour Europe and the UK in August, including dates with Gojira, Between the Buried and Me, and Imperial Triumphant, followed by a September tour of Australia, supporting Animals as Leaders – Car Bomb’s first time ever in Australia.
Aug 7 – Jaromer, CZ @ Brutal Assault Fest
Aug 8 – Berlin, DE @ Cassiopeia
Aug 9 – Karlsruhe, DE @ P8
Aug 10 – Utrecht, NL @ Pandora *
Aug 12 – Oberhausen, DE @ Turbinenhalle Δ
Aug 14 – Nottingham, UK @ Rock City Beta
Aug 15 – Bristol, UK @ ArcTanGent Fest
Aug 16 – London, UK @ Oslo
Aug 18 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega #
Aug 19 – Stockholm, SE @ Bar Brooklyn #
Aug 20 – Oslo, NO @ Goldie #
Aug 21 – Aalborg, DK @ SH35 #
Aug 22 – Kiel, DE @ Kieler Schaubude #
Aug 23 – Haarlem, NL @ Complexity Fest #
Sep 12 – Adelaide, AU @ Hindley Street Music Hall ∞
Sep 14 – Brisbane, AU @ The Tivoli ∞
Sep 18 – Melbourne, AU @ Forum ∞
Sep 19 – Sydney, AU @ Enmore Theatre ∞
Sep 21 – Perth, AU @ Magnet House ∞
* = Between the Buried and Me
Δ = Gojira
# = Imperial Triumphant
∞ = Animals as Leaders
Discography:
Tiles Whisper Dreams (2025, Self-Released)
Live in Santa Cruz (2023, Self-Released)
Mordial (2019, Self-Released)
Meta (2016, Self-Released)
w^w^^w^w (2012, Self-Released)
Centralia (2007, Relapse Records)
Lineup:
Michael Dafferner – Vocals
Greg Kubacki – Guitar
Jon Modell – Bass
Elliot Hoffman – Drums
Follow Car Bomb:
https://carbomb.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/carbombofficial/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5r1fQsxkiQl0VwUlERnDBP
https://youtube.com/@carbombmusic