I AM

Out of Dallas, Texas comes I AM, a five-piece metal band that has carved out a distinct identity with a self-coined subgenre they call Texas Death: a punishing synthesis of thrash and groove-heavy death metal that sounds exactly as formidable as it should. Vocalist Andrew Hileman formed the band in 2011 alongside guitarists Tom Reyes and Chris Burgess, bassist Erik Rodriguez, and drummer Ian Scott, and over more than a decade of work they have refined an approach that is focused, heavy, and completely committed to its own terms.

The influences they cite read like a catalog of metal's most uncompromising voices: Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Pantera, Power Trip, and Cro-Mags. What I AM has done with those influences is not imitation but synthesis, pulling from the vicious precision of thrash and the crushing weight of groove metal to build something that operates on instinct and impact.

Their debut album Life Through Torment arrived in 2017 and established the template: dense, aggressive, and purposeful. The follow-up, Hard 2 Kill, came out on November 2, 2018, through Deathwish Inc., and it represents the band firing on all cylinders. "Texas Death," which opens the record, names the genre they built and delivers on that name immediately, with riffs that hit hard and a rhythm section that locks in with mechanical force. "Paid in Sin" and "Burn Slow" carry the same energy across the album's runtime, while "Hard 2 Kill" as a title track makes its case simply by being exactly what it promises. Decibel Magazine and Kerrang! both took notice, the latter premiering a music video for "Burn Slow," a signal that the underground was paying attention.

In 2022 they returned with Eternal Steel on MNRK Heavy, deepening their catalog and demonstrating that their ambition had not cooled. Moving from Deathwish Inc. to MNRK Heavy reflects the trajectory of a band that has earned its place in a conversation about what serious heavy music can do.

More recently, "dr.Jakil and mr. Hyde (new)" points forward to what I AM is working toward next. The stylized riff on the Jekyll and Hyde concept suits the band's sensibility: a story about something dark running under the surface, expressed through music that makes that darkness audible and physical. It is a track that fits their catalog not as a departure but as a logical extension of everything they have built since 2011.

Texas Death is their term, their flag, their summary. I AM have spent well over a decade making music worth the weight of that description.