1914 present a banger from their upcoming LP
The day before yesterday, death metal band 1914 released the single "1916 (The Südtirol Offensive)" from their upcoming fourth album Viribus Unitis. The musicians promise that the announced record will be their most vicious one yet.
The new track places the listener right in the middle of the LP and focuses on the Battle of Asiago, also known as the Trentino Offensive. The full-length album itself tells the story of one man — a Lviv native who went through the entirety of the Great War and Italian captivity before finally returning to his hometown in the midst of the Polish–Ukrainian War.
"From my point of view, this is the weakest track on the album — a death metal banger, rather simple and straightforward, able to draw the audience’s attention. The rest of the tracks, on the other hand, are more complex and longer (well, except for the album opener, which we'll also release as the second single)," the band’s frontman Dmytro Kumar told Neformat.
According to the musician, this track serves as a transition between the years 1914–1915, marked by hysteria and a thirst for battle, and 1917–1918, when rage and the lust for blood had vanished, leaving only deep exhaustion and the dream of peace and coming home. Thus, the song doesn’t fully convey the atmosphere of Viribus Unitis, both aggressive and sorrowful.
The animated video for the song was created by Tanya Pryimych, Olena Onyshchuk, and Rita Bezditko.
The musicians also shared with Neformat that their approach to songwriting hasn't changed, as they still transform whatever "boils inside" into music.
"This album is all the grief, pain, hatred, anger, and every emotion we’ve had during the full-scale invasion, absorbing the events, the news, the situation, the deaths of friends, and so on. All of that spilled out emotionally into this record. That’s why it turned out to be the most vicious of all our works," adds Dmytro.
As for the sound, this time the band worked on it together with the renowned Swedish Fascination Street Studio, which specializes exclusively in heavy music, which had a positive effect on the final result. Another distinctive feature of the LP is the decision to abandon brass and string instruments in favor of a male choir, which brought the necessary epic quality to certain tracks.
The Viribus Unitis LP will be released on November 14 via Napalm Records.
1914 is a Ukrainian death metal band formed in Lviv in 2014, on the centenary of the First World War, the theme that became the foundation of their songs. Their music blends several styles, including doom and death metal. The band has three albums under their belt, as well as a split with US-based Minenwerfer, an EP, and several singles. Since 2019, their music has been released through Napalm Records.
1914 online:
https://www.instagram.com/1914_official_page/
https://www.facebook.com/1914band
Photo by Rolf Venema via Instagram
