Queens black metallers Woe have announced Legacies of Frailty, their first album since 2017’s great Hope Attrition. Band leader Chris Grigg played every instrument on the album, except for a few contributions from drummer Lev Weinstein (also of Krallice), and the first single is the nearly-seven-minute “Scavenger Prophets,” a genuinely epic song that really takes you on a journey and feels like a very exciting return.
Chris said to Decibel:
“Scavenger Prophets” is a song about the people who eagerly exploit chaos for their own benefit. It’s told from shifting perspectives, moving between the dramatic language of the true believers and a commentary that sees them for who they are. It’s a familiar scene that’s all around us but it’s not clear whether the people in the mobs know that they’re LARPing as soldiers in a great battle or if they’re just capitalizing on the moment. It captures the dramatic darkness and seriousness of conflict in the way that only black metal can. It’s a storm of raging riffs that strikes a balance between the icy severity of battle and the sorrow of wasted lives and ruined hopes.
The phenomena of people desperate to belong to something bigger than themselves is something Woe explored on the last album in ‘No Blood Has Honor’ and it fascinates me. Every issue, every position, you’ll find people eager to weaponize and you’ll find people glad to be weaponized. These are key themes in Legacies of Frailty, a concept album about the way a society collapses as our modern intellect is overwhelmed by the primal call of tribalism and warfare. Religious brainwashing and self-proclaimed prophets manipulating the masses are classic black metal themes. They’re extremely relevant right now. Legacies of Frailty tells the story of a world engulfed in it and describes a population that’s helplessly consumed by the fires of conflicts that we thought were long-extinguished.
Vocally, I wanted moments to feel like you were listening to a great unhinged orator, like a preacher lost within the word of their lord, commanding their army to rise up. In the speaker’s anguish, we hear their own desperation to find purpose amid the overwhelming sense of their own pointlessness. These are omnipresent themes throughout Woe’s history, and while Legacies of Frailty frames them in the context of a culture war that devours the world, we can still understand how emptiness can drive us to extremity.
Listen below. The album comes out September 29 via Vendetta Records.
Tracklist
1. Fresh Chaos Greets the Dawn
2. Scavenger Prophets
3. The Justice of Gnashing Teeth
4. Distant Epitaphs
5. Shores of Extinction
6. Far Beyond the Fracture of the Sky