Kansas City death metal veterans Ares Kingdom have returned to their own Very Metal Sound studio to record their fourth full-length album, By the Light of Their Destruction, for the esteemed Nuclear War Now! Productions – the band’s label home since 2004.
Following up the acclaimed First World War-themed album The Unburiable Dead of 2015 – an album recognized by the National World War I Museum in the USA – By the Light of Their Destruction brings a new focus for Ares Kingdom’s sound on an altogether darker, heavier, and more obscure trajectory.
What was the inspiration behind the pivot to darkness? Guitarist and songwriter Chuck Keller explains: “I was a bit worried about a direction for Ares Kingdom after finishing writing the The Unburiable Dead, but one day during the summer of 2015, I was going through my Vulpecula archive and found a few forgotten and unused ideas I had been outlining before we ended the band in 1999. They reawakened the old Vulpecula fire in me, and I knew it was time to go back to darkness and obscurity.”
“Fourth albums are often more technical and noodling than an ordinary band’s older records, and so are notoriously lacking original fire and fury. Rarely does a band in our position purposely make their approach more primitive, but for us, it was the obvious thing to do,” said bassist/vocalist Alex Blume.
Drummer Mike Miller echoed, “While the new songs and our production style still sound like Ares Kingdom, our focus during rehearsals was on the primal power of the songs. It’s easily the heaviest material we’ve ever come up with.”
By the Light of Their Destruction is slated for release in spring 2019 on LP, CD, picture disc, cassette tape, and digital formats, all courtesy of Nuclear War Now! Productions.
Current tracklisting is as follows:
The Hydra Void
Burn, Antares (Scorpius Diadem)
Dark Waters Eridanus
Radiant and Storm
Eighteen Degrees Beneath
Allegory
The Bones of All Men
Iconologia
A Reward for Sin
Talis Chimera Est
(not actual cover)
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