Warbringer: Toward The Sound of Guns, Toward a Glorious End
Of all the thrash bands that exploded onto the scene with the retro-thrash boom of the mid-2000s, none are quite as magnificent as WARBRINGER. The quintet, led by vocalist John Kevill, may not have the commercial success of HAVOK or MUNICIPAL WASTE, but until their hiatus in the early 2010s WARBRINGER had one of the most brutal discographies in thrash. In 2017, Kevill made a triumphant return with Woe to the Vanquished, their strongest album to date, flexing his lyrical and songwriting prowess and creating some of the most incredible, war-obsessed thrash to date. After a hugely successful album cycle, WARBRINGER return with their newest record, Weapons of Tomorrow – and they are more extreme than ever.
“Extreme thrash is the term we coin for ourselves. We’re not blackened thrash, we’re not death-thrash, we’re both; we’re on that fulcrum between the transition of thrash to the extreme music that followed,” Kevill muses, delving into the increased extremity present on Weapons of Tomorrow, and, to a lesser extent, Woe to the Vanquished. “Unlike the bands that existed at the time that transition was going on, we have a retrospective view of the entire spectrum, so we’re able to pick and choose elements from further apart in time that we think makes sense together, but the sounds didn’t end up that way in the original development of the genre.”
But while the increasing brutality of WARBRINGER’s brand of thrash is certainly interesting, what’s more fascinating is the lyrical evolution. An avid reader of history, the history of warfare has always played a role in Kevill’s lyrics, but recently, that is backed up with a more formal education. Since the release of Woe to the Vanquished, Kevill has completed his bachelor’s degree in history, and his educational path isn’t stopping there.
“I actually got to teach a lecture at California State University, Northridge, as an undergrad. I taught a whole class of 30 people about Stalingrad, 1942, for an hour and a half. I had a blast! Hopefully, I’ll be working on my Masters when we’ve finished Weapons of Tomorrow. I’m trying to alternate these two things in my life; WARBRINGER, and what will eventually be an academic career.” Kevill explains his academic aspirations, before detailing why he loves history, and how it has impacted his lyrics. “History is just stories about people, in fact, it’s all the best stories. Spoiler alert, in the next Marvel movie the good guys will win. With history, you can have the spoiler and the outcome but that’s not even the interesting part, it’s the how. I find a lot of rich material for music. You won’t find a lot of Satanic evil in WARBRINGER, because that stuff doesn’t exist, but atomic bombs and large scale massacres do. What should you actually be afraid of?”
This lyrical grip on the reality of the horrors of war proved to give way to the most ambitious song of the band’s career on Woe to the Vanquished; When the Guns Fell Silent. The song – not coincidentally running at eleven minutes, eleven seconds and incorporating traditional war poetry from the First World War – is a masterpiece, telling a God’s eye view of the slaughter of the First World War, with men being gunned down in their thousands. Weapons of Tomorrow ends on a similar note, again going back to the trenches, but instead telling a story in a very personal way with Kevill becoming the soldier, rather than watching from above.
“Glorious End was really my pet project on this album. I wanted to capture a song about war, but not flag waving and cannons blaring, not about the actual combat, I’ve used that imagery before. I wanted to get more into the emotion, the human element, what drives men to fight and die. As everyone knows, there were all these failed assaults in the First World War, where thousands and thousands of men were charging headlong into machine gun fire and getting cut to pieces. Then next week, they’re doing it again. It’s such a colossal waste of life, but at the same time, I really admire these men. They’re braver than I could be.” Kevill begins, detailing his inspiration behind Glorious End before talking about the actual story. “In the song, it’s a dialogue between a father and son. The son is saying that he’ll be brave like their ancestors were, and the father is extolling these virtues. But when he gets to this battle that he’s being preparing for all his life, his company gets hit in a gas attack, and he dies right there. This is where we move out of the time where the knight could slay the dragon and save the princess just because he was brave and heroic, ‘cause now the dragon has a gun and he’ll just shoot you. This is when the Age of Heroes ends, and the Age of Machines dawns.”
With such narrative strength behind WARBRINGER, and music brilliant enough to back it up, it is a true blessing that Kevill was able to revive the band and come back stronger than ever. Metal has always been a labour of love – there’s little prospect of financial riches, or even stability, in this genre. Kevill even jokes that with WARBRINGER, he “bought a one-way ticket from the middle to the lower class!” But when all the sacrifices come together and deliver something as strong as Weapons of Tomorrow, for Kevill, it’s all worth it.
“These records will all still be here long after I’m dead. That’s what makes me so willing to fight and sacrifice for WARBRINGER. When I’m in the ground, my music will live on and something can pick up my records and hopefully get something out of it. If I can make something for people, that justifies my existence, it justifies the air I breathe, the food I eat, the water I drink. If you don’t give something back, you’re just a fucking leach.”
Powerful words. But there is a very real sense that the work on building WARBRINGER’s legacy has really only just begun.
Weapons of Tomorrow is out now via Napalm Records.
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