Warbringer’s John Kevill on the thrash band’s vision of Wrath and Ruin
Warbringer. // photo credit Alex Solca
California thrash band Warbringer’s latest album, Wrath and Ruin, is the band’s seventh full-length, and with last month’s release of the record via Napalm Records, they show no signs of slowing down, both literally and metaphorically. Be it “irresistible battle vest fist pumper” that is “Neuromancer,” the “atmospheric, true cult epic” that is “Cage of Air,” or the powerful bummer “A Better World,” Warbringer knows how to keep things interestingly vital with the music they make.
Warbringer plays the Bottleneck on Thursday, April 3, with Allegaeon, Skeletal Remains, and Summoning the Lich, as part of “The Vortex of Violence Tour.” Details on that show here.
We spoke with the band’s lead vocalist, John Kevill, via Zoom ahead of both Wrath and Ruin‘s release and its related tour. We began by diving right into “A Better World,” a song that we feel is very appropriate for these times and that Kevill describes as an encapsulation of the themes of the record and things with which he’s trying to grapple.
The Pitch: What are you trying to grapple with on Wrath and Ruin?
John Kevill: There are eight songs, and they each go their own ways, but I think the central overarching theme and what I’m kind of trying to express on this one is sort of just a disillusionment with the future stuff, basically a mixture of class power. the oligarchy world we’re heading into or we’re already in, and fear of technology being used in all the wrong ways to turn people into these stimulus-responding pseudo-robots instead of something more soulful and organic.
It’s about a cold, lifeless, future world of serfs and lords where the many are kept in line by advanced bread and circuses for the few to go and rob them and I think that’s what we pretty much got and I think that every indicator shows that it’ll get more that way as we move forward. I’ve been married and stuff for several years now and we would like to have children in the basic sense, but it’s like, I want to put them into the world that I think I’m going to be putting them into.
All these big picture things. What I’m really trying to get at this record, it’s all this big picture, civilizational stuff as it affects you, the individual, in your actual life–that’s what I’m trying to hit at. You’ll notice “A Better World,” it’s less about the power structure and more about what the person’s doing trying to cope with it.
How are you getting ready for the tour?
Oh, it’s it feels like I’m somewhere in the countdown before someone presses a launch into space right now, ’cause I’m sitting in my forest here in the middle of North Florida now. I’m the only one who lives out here. But I’m in this idyllic, swampy forest, and things are all peaceful, and I hear the chickens outside and stuff. I’m gonna go and not be in any of that for a while, so this is the part of me that’s like, “Every day is gonna be on the schedule, on the grind,” so I’m just kinda, to be honest, trying to not think about it too much before it just happens.
It will. I know what to do once I’m in that mode. I’ve done it so many times. It’s like riding a bike. But yeah, it’s not that I don’t want to do it–I do–but just the trepidation at the change is something I’ve always struggled with. I leave on Thursday. It’s Monday evening now, so I got two more days at home and I’m just trying to kind of enjoy it as uncluttered as I can.
As far as what I’ve done to get ready, I’ve done some vocal stuff. I’ve been going to the gym and all that. Nothing too exciting, but normal things. Once I get out to LA, I’ll rehearse with the band for a few days, and we have a warm-up show planned in Oxnard. We haven’t done this record cycle before, so we’re going to be doing new songs live and we just haven’t played in a minute.
Once you get on the road, do you have any rituals to keep yourself centered and sane?
Normal stuff. I gotta stretch and do a little exercise and try to eat a fruit or something that’s not a cheeseburger from time to time. Do my warm-ups and drink my water and my tea and all that normal singer stuff, but other than that, the big one is actually you don’t want to be in social situations as a singer where you’re having to shout over the bar music. That gets you worse than the show does, for whatever reason.
Sometimes, the part that sucks about like there’s like these two opposite forces of “I need to do these things so I can play my best” and “I want to do these things so I can actually enjoy myself,” so sometimes if I’m really in serious mode about my voice and trying to keep that at top shape, I end up not having a ton of fun outside of the show itself. I’m a bit reclusive sometimes, and I want to go and party with everybody, but I’m like, “I shouldn’t,” so I’ll get that way sometimes.
Touring for me, personally, is very much an up-and-down thing emotionally and it’s got real high highs and low lows and every tour, I’m going to have days where I’m just unreasonably stoked and I’m going to have days where I’m like, “What am I doing with my life?” at various points throughout it, and it’s been that way every tour I’ve ever done, big, small, or otherwise.
It’s just weird, and I’ve learned that it just is that way, and that I respond that way to it. I can get rid of it. I’ve learned to tell myself that on you might call “crash days” and if I’m feeling that way, recognize that that’s what it is, call my wife up and get some encouragement and try to eat a nice meal or get a massage or just something like that that’ll get me feeling a little better.
The end of the day, nobody who paid for the show cares–not that they don’t care but they shouldn’t have to care how I’m feeling that day or anything. I owe those people the best show I can. It’s a challenge. Your state is going to be different every day. Some nights, your voice can be feeling great, other nights can be a challenge. Some nights your body’s feeling fine, other nights you feel like you got hit by a bus. That bus is yourself headbanging the night before, that’s what that bus is called.
No matter what’s going on, it’s just re-centering myself and trying to keep mental discipline to try to just keep doing my job and do it to the standard that I think it’s important to do it, too. I’m always a little nervous about it, and I think the fact that I’m nervous keeps me sharp. If I was ever like, “Oh, I got this” too much, then I wouldn’t be as diligent as I need to be. It’s difficult music to execute live. It’s just athletic shit to perform.
I really appreciate you taking time to speak with me. It’s always a pleasure to get to talk to folks who are this enthusiastic about what they do.
Yeah, I try to be. Well, to be honest, it’s a real rollercoaster of enthusiasm towards my own work. I’ve felt the entire range of ways I could feel about my own band and the time in it. From being as high as I can be on it–“Yeah, we’re the coolest ever. This is so sweet!”–to like, “I have wasted my life. What am I doing?” and all of that in between.
When you compare how much you made on tour to how much living costs, that’s when you get to that second one and that one’s a tough one to swallow, it really is. That’s when I get that way, and there’s a good reason for it. But like, absolutely, this is who I am. I wouldn’t know who I am as an individual without this band anymore, it’s such a big part of me. It’s been my only band. It’s the main thing I’ve done in my life.
It’s an emotionally intense relationship, you might say, me and my own band. I felt the whole spectrum of feelings about it. I’ve been trying in the last couple of years to recognize that about myself and put that together in my head to be very candid about it.
That’s any creative endeavor, whatever it is. I think if you don’t have the “I am the greatest/I am the worst” spectrum of feelings, then do you really even create anything?
Right, right. It’s funny how that works. It’s kind of a trip, to be honest. That’s been my thing, recently, trying to put my own thoughts in context within myself and figure that out and try to level myself out because I’m very bipolar with my feelings about my own work and my own project there. You can see some of the depressive stuff that I feel all over this record. It’s there for sure.
I wanted to put that out and feel like I wasn’t pretending and I could just use it as an exorcism or whatever. This record has a lot of that. Probably the most negative I’ve ever been on a record, which is saying something, but it’s something about that feels cathartic and honest and I think people, hopefully, can relate in it.
It’s angry, furious music, so I shouldn’t be telling you about the time everything went awesome or whatever. That’s not the song I’m writing, generally.
Warbringer plays the Bottleneck on Thursday, April 3, with Allegaeon, Skeletal Remains, and Summoning the Lich, as part of “The Vortex of Violence Tour.” Details on that show here.
