Wraith have released "Over The Top", the second song from Descent Into Darkness, out on 13 November through Prosthetic Records. It is their sixth album and all of it is about the First World War.
Vocalist and guitarist Matt Sokol teaches history at a high school, which is where the record comes from, and it shows in what he chose to write about. Not commanders and not treaties. "Over The Top" is the whistle and the moment after it, from inside the head of a man who does not know whether he survives the next four minutes. "This character isn't sure what's going to happen, the whistle blows, and it's time," Sokol says.
The rest follows the same rule. "No Man's Land" is about being caught between an advance and a retreat; "Back in the Trenches" is a soldier losing his reason for being there; the earlier "Final Warning" runs the signs that preceded 1914 against the present day and leaves the reader to finish it.
Musically none of this slows them down. The song opens on a bass line and a held back groove and then goes where blackened speed metal from Indiana normally goes, which is fast.