There were times when I wondered if 1914 would ever release a new album. There were times when I wondered if they were even still alive or able to record. These doubts arise when your country is at war and fighting for its life. Thankfully, the Ukrainians are still in action and have found time to bless us with another outstanding album, Viribus Unitis.

This band are metal’s premier chroniclers of the horrors of war. On the most obvious level, they write about the wrenching events of World War 1. But now that their own country is in a life and death struggle, many analogies can be made with the current situation in Ukraine. That gives another layer of authenticity to what they do on Viribus Unitis. Their last album, Where Fear And Weapons Meet, released just before the war exploded in earnest, was a masterpiece and was my favorite album of 2021. Does the new one match it? I don’t think it surpasses it but it may just equal it.

This album is full of tension and doom. 1914 has always been experts at interweaving the sounds of actual battle and patriotic songs of WWI into their crushing metal odes. That continues here and intensifies. Sometimes fragments of old songs abruptly appear in the middle of metal mayhem…the effect is jarring at first, but brings context. As for the actual songs, the album starts with its heaviest and most intense material…’The Siege of Przymsl’, ‘Easter Battle For The Zwinn Ridge’, ‘The Sudtirol Offensive’. They combine the bulldozing power of BOLT THROWER with the cold, brittle edge of melodic black metal.

As the album goes on, it begins to become more doomy and there’s a certain resemblance to the Yorkshire doom of MY DYING BRIDE and PARADISE LOST. Which makes it most sensible that Aaron Stainthorpe of MDB adds his somber tones to ‘1918 pt 3: ADE’. The album ends with a stark, piano-dominated ballad ‘1919 (The Home Where I Died)’, where you can physically feel the sadness of a broken veteran who cannot adapt to peacetime. It’s not metal, really, but it IS heavy.

1914 is a very special band. They may be the very best ever to bring the reality of war to an extreme metal context. Not the phony bravado of blowing away other human beings, but the tragic senselessness of it all. An important band and important album.
Review By: Dr. Abner Mality

1914
Viribus Unitis
Napalm Records