Tactical is the debut studio album by American melodic death metal band World Under Blood. Recorded at HIV + Cocksplitter and Keene Machine Studios in Los Angeles, California with Logan Mader and Michael Keene, it was produced by the band's frontman Deron Miller and guest musician James Murphy. The album was released on July 26, 2011, by Nuclear Blast Records.
The material for Tactical was written by Miller and arranged with drummer Tim Yeung, with the exception of the two cover versions: Megadeth's "Wake Up Dead" and Malevolent Creation's "Alliance or War". Murphy mixed and mastered the album. Tactical reached number 23 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, selling around 900 copies in its first week.
Recording and production
Deron Miller (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Tim Yeung (drums, keyboards) first began performing together as World Under Blood in October 2006, recording three demo tracks with engineer Logan Mader in Los Angeles, California. The demo recordings, for the songs "Under the Autumn Low", "God Among the Waste", and "Dead and Still in Pain", were eventually released between November 2006 and September 2007.
Recording for Tactical took place at Mader's HIV + Cocksplitter Studios and second engineer Michael Keene's Keene Machine Studios in Los Angeles. Death guitarist James Murphy joined the group as a guest musician, performing guitar solos, bass and keyboards on numerous songs on the album, which he also mixed and mastered. but due to Miller's return to working with CKY its release was pushed back from July 2010 to July 2011. Although no singles were released from Tactical, a music video (directed by Shan Dan Horan) was produced for the song "Into the Arms of Cruelty". Upon its release, Tactical reached number 32 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, selling approximately 900 copies in the week of release.
Composition
Lyrically, Tactical deals with a number of complex personal and philosophical concepts, which Miller detailed in a track-by-track feature prior to the album's release. Within the feature, the band's frontman proclaimed that he was "obsessed with mental illness", and noted that at least three tracks on the album featured lyrical references to various mental conditions – "Pyro-Compulsive" is based on "the idea of someone lusting over lighting their house on fire while they're inside"; "Dead and Still in Pain" is written about depression and anxiety, in particular "not knowing what to do with yourself or where to turn"; and "Under the Autumn Low" references seasonal affective disorder, from which Miller claims he suffers on a regular basis.
"Into the Arms of Cruelty", which Miller has claimed is one of his favorite songs on the album, is described as the vocalist's "unrestrained opinion" on child abuse, which he says makes him "fucking sick".