By MICHAEL GINGOLD

The hard-rock horror sequel is poised to world-premiere at Fantastic Fest.

DEATHGASM II: GOREMAGEDDON, writer/director Jason Lei Howden’s follow-up to his 2015 cult favorite (pictured above), will be unveiled this Sunday, September 21 at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX, followed by a European premiere at Spain’s Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in October and an Australian premiere at Monster Fest October 11. It will also have exclusive special screenings on home turf at New Zealand’s Terror-Fi Fest for Halloween. The poster we got the first peek at (see it below) hails from Creepy Duck Design.

Milo Cawthorne and Kimberley Crossman are back as Brodie and Medina, along with fellow returnees James Joshua Blake, Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell and newcomers Kieran Charnock, Harrison Keefe and Maggie Nicole Robertson. Metal musician Matthew Kiichi Heafy of Grammy-nominated metal band Trivium composed the original score. The synopsis: “A few years after surviving the last demon apocalypse, Brodie is washed-up, broke, and stuck in small-town purgatory. But when he learns that NoizeQuest, a battle-of-the-bands competition, is coming to his town, he sees a shot at redemption–and maybe even a second chance with Medina. One problem: his drummer is missing an arm, and the rest of his band is, well…dead. Luckily, Brodie still has the pages of The Black Hymn, so raising his bandmates from the great beyond is just a riff away. But with every chord comes blood, guts, and the kind of apocalyptic chaos only Deathgasm can unleash.”

“DEATHGASM II: GOREMAGEDDON is a face-melting splatterfest made for the misfits, the freaks, the outcasts, the headbangers, and the gorehounds,” Howden says of his crowdfunded sequel. “In a world divided, heavy metal and horror fans are an international family united by our passion for extreme entertainment. DEATHGASM II is one big, brutal ‘HORNS UP’ to that family. We cranked out the most skull-shattering metal soundtrack in movie history, with tracks from Anvil, Sanguisugabogg, Skinless, Alien Weaponry, Frozen Soul, Havok, and motherflippin’ GWAR!”

“DEATHGASM became a global cult sensation, uniting comedy-horror fans with its mix of headbanging gore and juvenile humor,” says Andrew Thomas Hunt, Canadian producer and managing partner of Raven Banner. “Now, DEATHGASM II: GOREMAGEDDON cranks the amps to 11. Premiering at Fantastic Fest and Sitges–ground zero for the world’s hungriest genre fans–are the only places worthy of unleashing it. This is a film built for chaos in a packed theater: louder, bloodier, and more gleefully unhinged than ever before.”

New Zealand producer Nick Garrett adds, “DEATHGASM II: GOREMAGEDDON is for the fans, and not just because they helped pay for it. In these turbulent times it is important that audiences have access to pure, unapologetic, escapist entertainment. It’s a party movie, pure and simple, made to be watched with mates, mayhem, and at maximum volume. I cannot wait to see how fans of the original–and the new ones we’re about to drag into chaos–respond.”