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Reactivated San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal veterans FORBIDDEN<\/b> have released the official Mike Sloat<\/b>-directed music video for their second new song in over 15 years, “Mutually Assured Dysfunction”<\/b>. “Mutually Assured Dysfunction”<\/b> and “Divided By Zero”<\/b>, which was made available in late June, mark the band’s first recordings with FORBIDDEN<\/b>‘s current lineup, consisting of founding guitarist Craig Locicero<\/b>, alongside longtime bassist Matt Camacho<\/b> and the group’s latest additions, singer Norman Skinner<\/b> and drummer Chris Kontos<\/b>, plus VOIVOD<\/b> guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain<\/b>, who stepped in as a replacement for Steve Smyth<\/b> in July 2024.<\/p>\n
FORBIDDEN<\/b> comments: “‘Mutually Assured Dysfunction’<\/b> is our aggressive follow-up to ‘Divided By Zero’<\/b>. Like a crack to the skull, it lands hard. It’s about the DNA of endless arguments that people engage in. Sound bites over substance. This rationale is based upon the M.A.D. agreement of Rational Actors: A doctrine that assumes world leaders will be rational and self-preserving. Therefore, they will avoid any actions that would lead to their own country’s demise. This leap of faith leads to the kind of dysfunction that will ultimately lead to our destruction as a species.”<\/p>\n
At this past summer’s Motocultor Festival<\/b> in France, Locicero<\/b> was asked by Loud TV<\/a> what it’s like for him and his FORBIDDEN<\/b> bandmates to play thrash metal in 2025, since the music industry has changed a lot in the past four decades. He responded: “Yeah, yeah. Well, like that’s ever mattered to us. Yeah, it’s never really mattered to us. There was a time in the early ’90s where it killed everything. I think now thrash has a very permanent home because kids keep rediscovering it. And it goes along with my philosophy of the way I record music now, too. If you go back and you look at the history of thrash records, people wanna listen to the old stuff, and there’s a reason for that, because it wasn’t too perfect, it wasn’t too clean, it wasn’t manipulated by digital. Everything was so natural. So with the way we recorded, even though we recorded digitally, we didn’t fix everything. We laid a good drum track down, we laid a quick guitar track, quick guitar track, quick bass track \u2014 bang, bang, bang, bang. And so when you do things like that, the result is people feel that there’s more energy coming from that because there’s \u2014 I call it hair. There’s hair in it. I like hair. I like albums that sound perfect, I like really clinical metal records that are supposedly industry standard, but I don’t think they last as long in the fans’ hearts and minds. And that is being proven over the years, ’cause people just wanna go back and listen to old shit. You’ve gotta have the balls to do it, and we’re doing it.”<\/p>\n Craig<\/b> continued: “Another thing we did, too, is we recorded everything in [the standard guitar tuning of] E \u2014 not the whole album, but most of it tuned up, the way we used to tune. And you’ll probably find two or three bands in this whole festival that are tuned high like [that]. You can play Chuck Berry<\/b> and Elvis<\/b> [Presley<\/b>] and FORBIDDEN<\/b> \u2014 and old SLAYER<\/b>. We all used to be in E. If you can’t write heavy shit in E, then I don’t know what to tell you.”<\/p>\n Locicero<\/b> was also asked how the ripple effects from rising production expenses and shifting consumer spending have affected promoters, venue operators, agents and touring artists like FORBIDDEN<\/b> in 2025. He said: “You know what? I’m a realist\u2026 And to me, what I wanted to do is write the greatest record we could possibly write. And that’s why we got Chewy<\/b> in the band. That’s why this lineup’s so fire, with Norman<\/b> and everybody. And I always say \u2014 there’s an old thing from a movie, ‘A Field Of Dreams’<\/b>: build it and they will come. So if you build something good enough, if people want it, you’ll find a way to do it. If you can’t afford to go everywhere and play, that’s okay too. I mean, you don’t have to fucking \u2014 sorry, Wichita, Kansas, but I don’t have to play there if it’s not gonna be worth\u2026 If it costs too much to get there and you’re only paying X amount of money, we can’t play there. So that’s just a realistic part of the machine now, and you have to live with it and go with it. And people that really suffer under that idea get jaded and they just give up. I’m not that guy. I just adjust. I care about the music and the performances we do, and if we don’t go everywhere, I’m okay with that.”<\/p>\n When “Divided By Zero”<\/b> was first released, FORBIDDEN<\/b> commented in a statement: “The opening riff for ‘Divided By Zero’<\/b> was the first thing Craig<\/b> brought to the table as a new FORBIDDEN<\/b> song. The lyrics address the erosion of civility and society through divisive control of institutions, cultures, religion, and government. Without picking sides, ‘Divided By Zero’<\/b> points to anyone and everyone that partakes in this mass manipulation, willingly or unwittingly.”<\/p>\n The band added: “The video for ‘Divided By Zero’<\/b> is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, depicting how influential words and propaganda of the few have power to sway the many. Robots and monsters \u2014 how most of us unwittingly end up being one or the other through the multiple institutions’ relentless brainwashing and beating us down. All of the disturbing imagery, created by Ethan Renoe<\/b> at Crumb Hill<\/b>, visually captures the story perfectly, haunting, powerful, and poignant.”<\/p>\n “Mutually Assured Dysfunction”<\/b> and “Divided By Zero”<\/b> represent the bridge between classic and modern FORBIDDEN<\/b>. They were recorded similarly to FORBIDDEN<\/b>‘s debut album, 1988’s “Forbidden Evil”<\/b>, in approach: no samples, no triggers and no over-editing.<\/p>\n