Your Friday is about to become a whole lot more intense. Unreal City, from Pittsburgh, play a guttural, monstrous form of heavy hardcore, and they’ve just come out with a new album that hits like a brick to the face. The band’s members have some serious pedigree. Singer Joseph Sanderson also leads Eternal Sleep, and guitarist Robert Orr used to be in Integrity. You can hear plenty of both bands in Unreal City’s overwhelming attack. But with the new LP Cruelty Of Heaven, it’s pretty undeniable that Unreal City are absolutely their own thing.

Unreal City have been around for a long time, but Cruelty Of Heaven is only their second album. Their first was called Ephemeral Subsistence, and it came out 13 years ago. But Unreal City have kept putting out music since then, and Cruelty Of Heaven does not sound like a band returning from a long absence. Instead, Unreal City are an absolute machine, capable of absolutely brutal mosh-part breakdowns and occasional moments of ominous Metallica-style beauty. (Check out that closing track “Final Gift Upon Humanity.” Goddamn.)

Cruelty Of Heaven was one of the year’s most anticipated hardcore albums, and it has delivered. This shit stomps. It sounds gigantic, and it makes me want to punch a kodiak bear in the eye. We’ve already posted the early tracks “War Behind Bars” and “Sin In God’s Name,” and now you can stream the whole thing below.

Cruelty Of Heaven is out now on Closed Casket Activities.