[Cover photo credit to Sofiia Ruda]

The Ukrainian Death Metal band 1914 will be releasing their fourth album, Viribus Unitis on November 14, 2025, via Napalm Records. With their second single, “1914 (The Siege of Przemyśl)”, they further unveil the “horrors of war.”

The song’s story features the longest siege of World War I, where the Austro-Hungarian army experienced a crushing defeat. They set out to make the song “grim, grand, and devastating.”

Viribus Unitis shows the band’s continued commitment to “historical authenticity, both lyrically and conceptually.” Told through the personal accounts of a Ukrainian soldier in the K.u.K. army, the album follows real events, tracing a timeline from 1914 to 1919, and “paints a grim journey through the war’s rise, climax, and hollow aftermath.”
                                                                                                              
k.u.k. Galizisches IR Nr.15, Gefreiter, Ditmar Kumarberg says about “1914 (The Siege of Przemyśl)”:

Trapped behind fortress walls: In the icy grip of World War I, 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers found themselves surrounded, starving, and desperate inside the mighty fortress of Przemyśl. From September 1914 to March 1915, the Russian army laid siege, pounding the city with artillery and choking off supplies. Months passed. Food ran out. Horses, dogs, even rats, became rations. Disease spread. Morale crumbled. And then… surrender. One of the greatest capitulations of the war. The once-proud fortress fell, handing Russia a symbolic victory on the Eastern Front. But victory was fleeting! A short-term win for Russia, but the tides turned again when the Central Powers retook the city later that year. War shows no mercy.

The title Viribus Unitis, is Latin for “With United Forces”, and this is the personal motto of Franz Joseph I, the former emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They consider the story a “powerful symbol of survival and solidarity.”

 
While previous releases like The Blind Leading the Blind (2018) and Where Fear and Weapons Meet (2021) centered on the futility and finality of war, Viribus Unitis “exemplifies the interpersonal bonds forged under fire and the strength of those warriors who made it home: broken, changed, yet still alive.”
 
Musically, this album shows 1914 to have “a broader dynamic range, with soaring melodic leads, orchestral textures, and haunting clean vocals that provide dramatic contrast to the crushing heaviness.”