After a 5-year wait, Shai Hulud, pioneers of both the metal and hardcore scenes came out with a new record last month—Misanthropy Pure. Culled from material written on tour, new melodies and even “riffs written back in ’96,” says Matt Fox, guitarist and founding member of the band. ‘The new record is a mix of old and new.”

Thematically, the album deals with hatred—a “couple personal songs” but ironically more of a hatred of hatred. “Personal observations on the way people treat themselves and others. The insincerity present in so many Americans today,” said Fox.

Fox maintains that the goal of Shai Hulud is not to inspire hatred, lamenting how some fans latch onto the emotion and not the message they’re trying to put out into the world. “We want to inspire compassion, to make people think and feel, to inspire consideration. We want people to be self-aware,” he said.

Shai Hulud began in 1995 with Fox and Dave Silber, two friends with a mutual interest in hardcore. After all of Fox’s other bands fell through, Silber pestered Fox into making a hardcore band and “Shai Hulud started with the first song [he] wrote while on the toilet.” Fox repudiates the label of metalcore, saying “I write what I feel, and how I write is a hybrid of punk, hardcore and metal. It’s a blend of what I listen to.”

The new album itself is a mix of things as well, building on the feel of their first EP , but trying to “bring out new patterns [and] new emotions.” While the band has a thread of wry humour in them (even titling a previous release A Comprehensive Retrospective: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Release Bad and Useless Recordings, (after the title of Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove) Fox keeps the jokes to the liner notes, letting only a thread of sarcasm grace the lyrics.

While heading to Europe soon for their tour, Shai Hulud are excited to return to Canada around October, recalling fondly their Canadian tour back in ’99. “We did a couple shows in Newfoundland,” says Fox, “an all ages and a 21 and up, or whatever the drinking age is. It was a great crowd, we met some really cool people, and let me tell you, the drunk fans were great.”