"Woe to the vanquished" wird das neuste Werk der Neo-Thrash Vorreiter heißen und am 31.03.2017 erstmals über Napalm Records veröffentlicht. Damit sich die stetig wachsende Fangemeinde der Jungs aus Newbury Park schon einmal die Nackenmuskulatur geschmeidig machen kann, gibt es bereits ab heute ein Video zu "Silhouettes", welches Frontmann-Vorturner John Kevill mit folgenden Worten beschreibt:

This song, the album opener, is a blazing and intense number; we wanted the album to open with pure annihilation. I had the lyric in my head and the frantic riff under the verse since the beginning of 2014, and I am very pleased that it exists as a full song now. 

The idea for the song came from a particularly chilling detail found at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; when the atomic bombs went off the shadows of people whose bodies were vaporized still remain burned onto the walls and the ground where they once stood. To me, this is goddamn horrifying. I thought - "What if the souls of those dead remain trapped in the shadows?" I wanted to have the song written from a future where civilization has failed, the Earth is in ruins and the few remaining survivors live a horrible existence. The untold millions of shadows from this future, burnt into stone, look back at us in the present time and judge us for bringing about the apocalypse that, though we saw it coming, we did nothing to avoid.

"The way I see it, we continue funding weaponry that keeps getting more and more devastating (search "satan-2" if you think this issue is some relic), and leadership seems on a sharp downward trend as well. Not the ingredients for a positive outcome. Remember, it only takes one mistake, once, and everything everyone has ever built, written, painted, all music, all culture, every ounce of human achievement is gone, in a single blinding flash.

Like it or not, this is the world we live in today, and entering 2017 the delicate balance tips and sways more and more. So, Happy New Year. Enjoy the time we have left, and fucking thrash. Woe to the Vanquished. We're Ghosts!"

Die Story hinter dem Albumtitel beschreibt John ebenfalls ziemlich umfassend, hat er doch als studierter Geschichtler einen tiefen Einblick in die vertonte Materie:

"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."

01. Silhouettes
02. Woe to the Vanquished
03. Remain Violent
04. Shellfire
05. Descending Blade
06. Spectral Asylum
07. Divinity of Flesh
08. When the Guns Fell Silent

Um sich live ein Bild vom neuen Material machen zu können, solltet Ihr eine der folgenden Locations aufsuchen, in dem die Jungs zusammen mit Havok, Gorod und Exmortus die Wände zum wackeln bringen werden:

07.04.2017 - Hamburg @ Logo
15.04.2017 - Berlin @ Cassiopeia
16.04.2017 - Markneukirchen @ Framus & Warwick
17.04.2017 - München @ Feierwerk
19.04.2017 - Wien (A) @ Arena
22.04.2017 - Pratteln (CH) @ Z7
23.04.2017 - Saarbrücken @ Garage
30.04.2017 - Essen @ Turock