At last they have broken the silence.
Anyone remember Warbringer? It’s been a while since we have heard anything from these thrashers. Last releasing their record IV : Empires Collapse, today the band announce their brand new album Woe To The Vanquished.
The record set to be released March 31st was produced by Mark Plottnikoff, the man responsible behind work with both In Flames and Fear Factory, whilst being mastered by Howie Weinberg, topped off with artwork from Andreas Marschall which is based on a pyramid of 12,000 German helmets in the square of New York at the end of the First World War.
Regarding the album’s thematic element the title pertains to the Roman history before their great empire. The guitarist elaborates :
The title “Woe to the Vanquished” comes from early Roman history–before they were the huge empire they became. In 390 BC, a host of Gauls led by a warlord called Brennus attacked Rome, and captured all the city except the Capitoline Hill. From this hill the defeated Romans made a bargain, they would pay 1,000 pounds of gold for the Gallic army to leave the city with no further bloodshed. The Romans bring the gold before Brennus, who uses his own scales to measure it. On the Gaul’s scales, the Roman’s thousand pounds of gold measured to be less, which led the Romans to complain that the scale was rigged (it probably was). Responding to this, Brennus speaks “Vae Victis” (Woe to the Vanquished) and throws his sword on the counterweight. Because the Romans lost, they have to pay the rigged sum of gold as well as the weight of the sword, to add insult to injury. The irony here is that vowing this type of humiliation would never happen again, Rome went on to become an ancient war machine conquering and subjugating most of the old world. On the record “Woe to the Vanquished” is spoken in an ironic, mocking tone–the defeated are trampled and time marches on, uncaring, and forgets they ever existed.”
Speaking out regarding the announcement of the new album guitarist John Kevill states :
“For the music on this record we re-focused ourselves after a lot of the experiments on Empires Collapse, and decided we wanted to make a record that is start-to-finish more merciless, ruthless, and cruel, but also maintains some of the more melodic and progressive sense. What we ended up with is a record that has a lot of traits of classic thrash but also a lot of extreme metal, and a rather unique version of that blend. It’s overall faster and meaner than anything else we’ve put out, but also has our biggest and most ambitious song, the 11-minute “When the Guns Fell Silent” to close the record.”
Well, it sounds like the band have put a lot of work into Woe To The Vanquished and if their previous record was anything to go by this eleven minute epic near the end sounds as Prog as they might be getting. Despite line up changes and whatnot I think this might be a definite return from Warbringer. Now we just have to wait and see!
Warbringer’s new album Woe To The Vanquished is set for a March 31st release via Napalm Records.
