Warbringer frontman John Kevill spoke with Capital Chaos TV on the first stop of the band's North American tour with Destruction and Jungle Rot. Check out the interview below along with live footage from their show in Oakland, CA

On listening to and playing metal

Kevill: "When people ask me whats my favorite metal album, I've answered that question so many times, I still like it, I still care about it and I'm never gonna be one of those people that plays heavy metal and is like I don't like heavy metal like that dude from Mastodon, don't fuckin play heavy metal if you don't like it, its really artistically dishonest, isn't it. He's not the only dude, but there's this attitude, within certain parts of the metal community, metal musicians, that to be too cool for this kind of stuff....if you are the owner of the cheesecake factory, you just have to deal with it, because that's your fuckin business."

On reading reviews

Kevill: "I put so much of myself and my life into this album, I cant not look (at reviews). If you want to say on our first record, Warbringer is copying the 80's and offering nothing new, well we were 19 and there probably some truth to that. But i think we realized that, and very quickly addressed that, we were a very young and new band with no experience basically. And I think we had an extremely rapid and distinctive evolution, people to this day still treat us as if we are making our first album over and over again and we really haven't been. That's what bothers me most about reviews, that perception."

On March 31st, Warbringer released their monumental fifth record, entitled Woe To The Vanquished, via Napalm Records. It was produced and mixed by Mike Plottnikoff (Fear Factory, In Flames), mastered by Howie Weinberg (Slayer, Pantera) with cover art by the esteemed  Andreas Marschall (Sodom, Blind Guardian, Obituary).

Album formats:

- Regular Jewel Case Edition    
- 1LP Gatefold Edition (black & other coloured editions)      
- Super Deluxe Wooden Box Warchest Edition (CD, exclusive 2 track 7" single, flag, band logo dog tags) only available via the Napalm Records webstores in the US and Europe - strictly limited to 500 copies

Pre-order the album here.

Tracklisting:

“Silhouettes”
“Woe To The Vanquished”
“Remain Violent”
“Shellfire”
“Descending Blade”
“Spectral Asylum”
“Divinity Of Flesh”
“When The Guns Fell Silent”

Bonus 7" Single trackisting:

“Evil Dead” (Death cover featuring Chris Monroy of Skeletal Remains)      
“Arc Lite” (Coroner cover featuring Jadran 'Conan' Gonzalez of Exmortus)

Album stream:

Track-by-track Part 1:

“Remain Violent” video:

"Silhouettes" video:

More info on Woe To The Vanquished and the story behind it described by singer John Kevill, who is not only fronting Warbringer, but also studying to be a history professor:

"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."

Woe To The Vanquished “making of” :

Find Warbringer’s live itinerary here.