Converge vocalist Jacob Bannon has announced a new band called Umbra Vitae, which is also composed of Sean Martin formerly of Hatebreed and currently in Wear Your Wounds, Mike McKenzie of The Red Chord and Wear Your Wounds, Jon Rice of Uncle Acid and formerly of Job for a Cowboy and Greg Weeks of the Red Chord. The group has announced their debut album titled Shadow of Life, which will be released May 1st via Deathwish Inc. The project’s first single titled “Return to Zero,” has also been released. The band is named after Georg Heym’s poem of the same name, which was published in 1913.
“Return to Zero” is a straightforward and hard hitting death metal track with quickfire drumming, harsh screamed and growled vocals and intense break downs, filled with some intense chord progressions. The track is a little bit over two and a half minutes, and during the latter half goes into some more melodic breakdowns, which gradually build up into its aggressive final act.
“In many ways it embodied the character of what we were all creating together. For me, Umbra Vitae is darkly confrontational and my own internal struggles are nested within each song,” Bannon explained in a press release. “At this point in my life it is of the utmost importance to use this art and music as the vehicle for a healthy purge of emotion. By design, even in something this intense, there is righteous intent to be a better human through the process of creating it.”
Stephen Brodsky revealed that he was working with Converge on the Blood Moon project, which may work its way into the studio in the near future. Bannon’s other band Wear Your Wounds released Rust on the Gates of Heaven last year.
Shadow of Life
1. Decadence Dissolves
2. Ethereal Emptiness
3. Atheist Aesthetic
4. Mantra of Madness
5. Fear is a Fossil
6. Polluted Paradise
7. Intimate Inferno
8. Return to Zero
9. Blood Blossom
10. Shadow of Life
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