Just like the first comment on the album's thread points out, talk about the longest gap between albums is one of the first thing that comes to mind with this comeback album. Bands like Sortilège, Morbid Saint, Cirith Ungol, Exhorder, Acid Reign, Bang, Sir Lord Baltimore, Witchfinder General, Lucifer's Friend, and many others have had more than two decades in between their albums. One distinction though is that all of those are 70s or 80s rock and metal bands respectively. So much time has passed that we're now in a situation where not only does a 90s metalcore band join this list, but they do so with thirty years in between releases, a larger gap than a lot of the aforementioned.
There's more to Deadguy than just how long this gap is though. Their original material, a couple of EPs and their classic 1995 Fixation On A Coworker came at just the right time when metalcore was developing from various metallic hardcore sounds of bands like Unbroken, Integrity, and Strife. Bands like Converge, Ringworm, and Refused had already released stuff but hadn't yet found their footing. And what Deadguy did was push metalcore towards a more chaotic direction, a genre that would later be known as mathcore, and one where their only clear precursor was Rorschach. When Rorschach disbanded in 1993, guitarist Keith Huckins became one of the founding (and current) members of Deadguy, so the continuity was there.
It is quite amazing that everyone involved on Near-Death Travel Services has been a Deadguy member in the 90s, and somehow the album doesn't feel like it suffers from any member having lost it since. The vocals, from a guy whose last name is literally "Singer", while not necessarily sounding old, do betray the fact that the band originated in a metalcore scene that was closer to original hardcore punk, and hearing modernly polished mathcore with vocals that feel more classic is not very usual, but it doesn't affect how intense the album feels.
Vocals aside, the rest of the music also diverges from what we've come to associate with "mathcore" since, even if a lot of it dabbles in that intensity and chaos specific to the genre, but Deadguy's pioneer status has them playing a version that's more rooted in metalcore proper. Even compared to Fixation On A Coworker, what they play here is just a bit more straight-forward, and there are moments where it feels like the metalcore they take from is leaning closer to metal than the one of fore, with just a bit of a Slayer touch in some riffs and melodies.
Comeback albums like this usually only exist to reaffirm that a band is still present, often existing in an almost time-capsule state than to offer anything new. I can't say that Near-Death Travel Services is that different in that regard to comeback albums by the other bands I mentioned, but the sound that they're coming back to, this primordial version of mathcore, is not something I've gotten to hear a lot of since, which does make the album feel, while not exactly "fresh", at least not oversaturated.
