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fter completing their fourth album, IV: Empires Collapse, in 2013, California thrashers Warbringer were ready to call it quits. Out of five members, guitarist Adam Carroll and vocalist John Kevill were the only ones who planned to continue the band. Small tours and one-off shows followed the album’s release, but with more vacancies than filled positions, Warbringer needed to be rebuilt. Over the course of a few years and numerous lineup changes, Warbringer have come back stronger than ever with their fifth album, Woe to the Vanquished, set for release on March 31 via Napalm Records. “I wanted to continue, and I had an idea and a vision for what the next [album] should be,” Kevill
says. “It just felt so unsatisfying to leave it undone. All of the lineup changes of the last couple of years can be summed up with mine and Adam Carroll’s attempt to reconstruct the band and find the form of it that’s able to progress and able to make the next step the band should make. Luckily, that was aided greatly by the return of [drummer] Carlos Cruz, who was a core member in writing this album.” Woe to the Vanquished is an unrelenting beast of an album jam-packed with classic thrash elements contrasted by a more melodic and progressive approach. Standout tracks like opener “Silhouettes” and “Descending Blade” pummel the listener with blistering fast kick drums and razor-sharp guitar riffs. Warbringer close the album with the gloomy 11-minute and
11-second track, “When the Guns Fell Silent,” aptly named after the moment the first world war ended. The band incorporate clean and acoustic sections into the song while still holding down the violent style of thrash they are known for. “What I want to do, really, is create a brand of thrash metal that’s instantly identifiable as our own and that adds to the genre,” Kevill says. “You’ll notice songs one through five just blow shit up the whole time. We want it as interesting and with [as many] twists and turns and different structures as possible. With the end of the record, we wanted a more somber, kind of soul-crushing note.”
feels has strengthened his lyrical content. While he plans to finish his education in the coming years, the singer is optimistic that Warbringer will be able to carry on for the foreseeable future. “This band is my first venture into music, and I had no idea it would go on this long or that people would like it or any of that. I just had this inner desire to do it just for the sake of doing so,” Kevill says. “There’s been a very good response to the band and music and performances on the whole, so I guess I could count myself really lucky and fortunate that it’s gone this far and that I’m still able to do it after all of the [unfortunate] circumstances.”
During the years when the band were inactive, Kevill began studying history, something he
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