INTERVIEW: Warbringer brings ‘Wrath and Ruin’ to the world
Photo: Warbringer’s new album is called Wrath and Ruin. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Atom Splitter PR with permission.
Warbringer, giants of thrash metal, are back with a new album on Napalm Records. Wrath and Ruin will be released Friday, March 14, and with this new set of songs, the band is not holding back on its metal-infused commentary on the state of the world. One only has to listen to Warbringer’s new single, “A Better World,” to understand the current goals of the group and what they forcefully have to say about life in 2025. The banger is a no-holds-barred look at dystopian society and whether the problems of the world can actually be solved.
“People seem to like it so far, and that’s a good sign,” said frontman John Kevill, who has been working on the album, in a roundabout way, for four years, ever since 2020’s Weapons of Tomorrow. The last year or so is when the guys came together and kickstarted the recording process, but the ideas have been circling in Kevill’s mind for quite a long time.
“I always say this, the band’s called Warbringer, so if it doesn’t kick your ass, I would want my money back,” Kevill said about the band’s sound in 2025. “So it’s got to be in line with the band’s core identity in that sense, as vicious thrash that’s going to tear your face off and stuff. I think that having done that, there’s more of a melancholic vibe to the ideas and songs on this one, and it’s a little more bleak and dystopian I would say than the previous records. It also has more of a dark and extreme edge to it than what we had done before.”
Why did Warbringer go darker and more melancholic for Wrath and Ruin? Well, Kevill points to the world, in particular the despair he sees around him and the uncertainly about the future. Some of the anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic is found within these songs, especially the systems of society that showed their true face during that period, he said.
“At this point, we’ve got six records before this, so I don’t want to make a record that’s just for the sake of making it or to complete a record deal,” he said. “It’s our name there, and that’s our artistic reputation, legacy, whatever that might be and everything. … I hate trying to force it out, so it took a while. It might take as long next time because I like to think we’ll never put out a record if we don’t think we have something to say.”
Kevill is particularly happy with “A Better World,” perhaps the most profound tune on the entire album. He admitted that his fellow band members were not sold on the title of the song because it doesn’t sound heavy or brutal, but the singer would like assure fans that the tune is dark and cynical, just as listeners have come to expect from Warbringer.
“And it’s got a sarcastic grimness to it,” he said. “To call it bluntly, the future is only going to get worse for everybody. … We’re not going to fix the climate. The great mass of people are going to get poorer. We’re doing mass surveillance. Basically I think global society is on a negative trend right now, and there’s some potentially existential crises to human civilization at the moment. And we’re not going to do anything about it or even try to solve it.”
As a means of comparison and contrast, Kevill likes to point to his childhood when there seemingly were more optimistic messages, from characters like Captain Planet, who promised kids that the world can be saved if they pick up litter and recycle.
“Nobody believes that anymore,” Kevill said matter-of-factly. “It’s pretty much the best you could hope to do is slow down the damage. That’s the best-case scenario, and it doesn’t even look like that’s what we’re going to get. So that is doom-ensely depressing, and it’s something that people live in. And one begins to have to ask themselves questions like, OK, I’m married with a wife, and if we have kids, would that be a crime against those kids to bring them into what we expect to come in the next 50-80 years? In the future they’re to live in, would I want to live there? Probably not. And yet even though you know all this, you still have got to show up to your job, which probably doesn’t pay you enough relative to the cost of living and just spin the wheels and go on like everything’s fine, when it’s clearly, absolutely not fine. Everybody does this, and I think many people feel this way or have a clear perspective on this. And there’s just nothing you can do about it.”
Kevill added: “It’s a real thing, and it’s from the heart. It’s not the condition I want to be in, but it is. It is real, so I thought it was an interesting song to write. And I thought it was a good thing for metal to express. … It’s certainly a bummer song, but it’s something real that I think is worth writing.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Warbringer’s new album, Wrath and Ruin, is available Friday, March 14, from Napalm Records. Click here for more information.
