Jay H. Gorania - vocals
Dustin Putz - guitars
JP Campo - drums

Trench Warfare is an American black/death metal band formed in Midland, Texas in 2015, later relocating its base of operations to Austin. Emerging from the barren landscape of West Texas, the band developed a savage and uncompromising style rooted in bestial black metal, old-school death metal and war metal, delivering a deliberately primitive and hostile sound built around relentless riffs, abrasive vocals and an atmosphere of violence and destruction.

The origins of Trench Warfare can be traced to vocalist Jay H. Gorania and guitarist Tony Goyang Jr. The two discovered a shared enthusiasm for extreme underground acts such as Blasphemy and Beherit, influences that were relatively uncommon in their local surroundings at the time. That common musical ground provided the foundation for Trench Warfare, with bassist Kelly Bogues subsequently joining the early incarnation of the band.

Trench Warfare made its first recorded statement with the Perversion Warfare demo in August 2015. Featuring Gorania on vocals, Goyang on guitars and programmed drums, and Bogues on bass, the three-song recording immediately established the band's primitive mixture of black and death metal. The demo contained “Decimate Legions,” “Evil Shall Triumph” and “Blood Cleansing,” songs that would later be revisited for the band's debut full-length.

Additional material appeared in 2016 on the multi-band release Of Vultures and Vermin / House of the Unholy. By this stage Trench Warfare had begun expanding beyond the original demo material while further defining its particular interpretation of war-infused black/death metal.

The band's first full-length album, Hatred Prayer, was released through Transcending Obscurity Records in August 2019. Recorded with Gorania on vocals, Goyang handling guitars and bass, and Lee Fisher on drums, the album presented a considerably more developed version of the violence introduced on the debut demo. Twelve tracks combined furious black/death metal with elements of war metal, doom, hardcore punk and old-school death metal while maintaining the deliberately raw character of the band's earlier recordings.

Rather than relying entirely on speed, Hatred Prayer incorporated slower and more oppressive passages alongside its blasts and chaotic riffing. The album also included new recordings of the three songs originally featured on Perversion Warfare as well as a cover of “Young Lord” by American hardcore punk band Poison Idea, reflecting the broader punk and hardcore influences within Trench Warfare's music.

Following Hatred Prayer, the band continued performing while undergoing several personnel changes. Nuclear War Now! Productions revisited the group's earliest material in 2023 with an expanded reissue of Perversion Warfare, combining the original three-song demo with four tracks originally released on the 2016 compilation.

A lengthy period separated the first album from its successor, but Trench Warfare eventually returned with Achtung! Destroy the Weak in August 2026. The second full-length marked the band's first album in seven years and pushed its sound further toward the crushing weight of traditional death metal while retaining the primitive aggression and hostility of its black/death and war metal foundations.

Recorded at Come And Track It Studios in Austin, the album featured Jay H. Gorania on vocals, founding guitarist and principal songwriter Tony Goyang Jr., guitarist Dustin Putz and bassist Jake Holmes, with Ronnie Parmer of Malevolent Creation and Perdition Temple handling the drums. The record was mixed by Jarrett Pritchard and consists of eight tracks of dense and aggressive extreme metal.

On Achtung! Destroy the Weak, influences from classic death metal bands such as Morbid Angel and Dismember became increasingly prominent, complementing the band's longstanding appreciation for the more chaotic extremity of acts including Deiphago, Diocletian, Genocide Shrines and Tetragrammacide. The result retained the violent character associated with Trench Warfare while giving the music greater rhythmic weight and a stronger old-school death metal foundation.

Following the recording of the album, co-founder Tony Goyang Jr. amicably departed Trench Warfare. The band subsequently continued as a trio consisting of vocalist Jay H. Gorania, guitarist Dustin Putz and drummer JP Campo, the latter also known for his involvement with acts including VX, Extremely Rotten and Sadistic Force.

Throughout its existence, Trench Warfare has maintained a deliberately confrontational approach to extreme metal. War, death, destruction, hatred and perversion dominate its thematic landscape, while musically the band draws from several of the most abrasive corners of the underground. Although frequently associated with war metal, Trench Warfare does not simply reproduce the genre's established formula. Its music combines the primitive chaos of bestial black metal with the physical weight of old-school death metal, traces of hardcore punk and an increasingly pronounced traditional death metal influence.

From the raw assault of Perversion Warfare, through the destructive intensity of Hatred Prayer, to the heavier and more developed Achtung! Destroy the Weak, Trench Warfare has carved out a particularly hostile corner of the American black/death metal underground.

Perversion Warfare (Demo, 2015)
Hatred Prayer (Album, 2019)
Achtung! Destroy the Weak (Album, 2026)

Black Metal/Death Metal
United States