EPK – Never Reborn – Ashes of Our Past (2023)
Publicist – Jon Asher – jon[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
“Ashes of Our Past is a big step up from our previous release, we took more time on this one and it shows. The production is huge, Ryan at Homewrecker Studio did an outstanding job once again, everything sounds so big and clear. We used Audiosiege to master the album and it really shines. You can put the album back-to-back with anything out there and it will hold its own. We spent a lot of time comparing it to the greatest bands around, Kreator, Megadeth, Dark Funeral, you name it, we wanted to make sure the sound quality was not inferior to anything. The album has been met with great reviews, it’s been mentioned a few times that it could be in talks of album of the year, saying it is very original. We have been shopping it around to record labels, so hopefully, it gets picked up by someone. If not, we will continue to promote it ourselves. It’s hard to have a sound all your own these days, so when someone says that we don’t sound like anyone else, it’s the biggest compliment you can get. Those are the reviews of the album that we cherish the most.” – Never Reborn
For fans of Kreator, Carcass, Death, Dissection, Necrophobic
Band: Never Reborn
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Release Date: March 18, 2023
Label: Self-Release
Neverreborn.com | Facebook.com/NeverRebornBand | Instagram.com/never_reborn | Twitter.com/neverrebornband
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“There is no other way to really describe ‘Ashes of Our Past’ other than excellent. It is an absolutely fantastic album and any fan of 80’s style black/thrash/death should get on this because it really is one of the best underground albums of 2023.” Adam McCann / Metal Digest
“Never Reborn plays a musical style that takes Black, Death and Thrash Metal and mixes it in with the melody of Classic Heavy Metal to create a sound of their own.” – John Larsen / Blackened Death Metalzine
[Download Album Cover | Download Album Lyrics]
Band: Never Reborn
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Release Date: March 18, 2023
Label: Self-Release
Track Listing:
1. Storms End – 0:44
2. Never Reborn – 5:49
3. Existence Denied – 6:16
4. Ashes of Our Past – 4:16
5. Haunted Eternally – 6:41
6. Deathmarch Armageddon – 5:12
7. Fallen One – 5:43
8. Children of Fire – 5:52
9. False Prophecies – 2:56
10. Requiem (World of Hurt) – 4:44
Album Length: 48:17
Album Credits:
• All songs performed by: Never Reborn
• All songs written by: Steve White
• Produced, Engineered, and Mixed by: Ryan Bram / Homewrecker Studios
• Mastered by: Brad Boatright / Audiosiege
• Album Artwork by: Simon Bossert
• Member of ASCAP
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About The Album Artwork:
We looked at a lot of different artists from around the world for this album cover and decided to go with Simon Bossert, out of Germany. His artwork really speaks to the music on this album. The cover has a very dark feel to it, and has just enough occult symbols without going overboard.
Album The Album:
Lyrically each song is a stand-alone piece, other than the final song of the album, which is part-2 of a trilogy. By stand-alone, I mean, we have a song about reincarnation and another one about no afterlife, some songs might contradict another song, the album is like a collection of short stories and we don’t feel like we need to stick to any rules. The music on the album is a sonic journey, each song was carefully placed in a specific order on the album to give it an even flow. We spent a lot of time arranging the order of the album tracks.
Track By Track:
Track-1: Storms End
This song sets the tone for the album, it’s a very tranquil 44-second instrumental…and as the Storm Ends the real Storm Begins, leading right into the song Never Reborn.
Track-2: Never Reborn
We took the name for the band from this song, it is a staple of our sound, to me it’s an album wrapped up in one song.
Track-3: Existence Denied
It’s classic alien abduction…about someone who is looking for signs of alien existence, not knowing that he has been getting abducted his entire life. The aliens are doing tests on this person to try and figure out why we exist as humans. You’ll have to read the lyrics to get the answer. We do have a lyric video for this song on YouTube.
Track-4: Ashes of Our Past
This is about reincarnation, about being cursed to remember past lives, loved ones that were left behind, and the torment of knowing that current loved ones won’t be forgotten in death.
Track-5: Haunted Eternally
It wasn’t written to be a modern-day “Romeo and Juliet” but there are some similarities, which were totally unintentional, I wrote the song on a more personal level. This is one of the songs that wasn’t meant to be on this album, but after dropping a song a week before entering the studio we agreed to record it, even though it had no lyrics or title. There was a lot of pressure on me to write the lyrics, and I had no concept at the time of what the song should be about. I’m completely happy with the outcome, it really rounds out the album.
Track-6: Deathmarch Armageddon
A possessed serial killer is on a rampage, you’d better beware…It was the first song I ever wrote in drop tuning, now half of our songs in drop tuning and the other half standard tuning. The reviews have been really favorable on this track.
Track-7: Fallen One
This one is about Lucifer’s fall from Heaven, the rise of the Antichrist, and the Final war of Armageddon. The first few verses are taken right out of the bible, word for word, it’s pretty evil. This a real crowd favorite and has a little bit of everything, it builds up gradually throughout the song, and climaxes in a fury of speed.
Track-8: Children of Fire
This was originally going to be the title track of the album. I began writing lyrics based on Dante’s Inferno, but not as some magical journey into hell, more of being alive and well one minute and in hell awaiting judgment the next, fully understanding that Heaven and Hell are real, and knowing you are doomed to burn forever. It wasn’t until jamming on Bathory “Enter the Eternal Fire” one night that l drew a connection between the songs, lyrically they could be brothers. I’m a lifelong fan of Bathory by the way, they are another band people will say we remind them of.
Track-9: False Prophecies
This is an instrumental, it was originally going to be acoustic guitar only but we decided to add percussion and bass. It’s not a song you’d expect to find by a band like us, but it brings balance to the album, it’s close to 3-minutes but feels much shorter. It really sets the stage for the album closer, “Requiem (World of Hurt)”.
Track-10: Requiem (World of Hurt)
This is part 2 of Heaven Shall Forsake, which was on the EP. It’s about the “child” in the first song, how he was exiled from the Church, and how he came back to do war with the Church. It’s our thrashiest song, and very 80s, in fact, I wrote it sometime around 1984, if there’s ever a pit going at our shows, this is definitely the song that gets it going. Expect an official full-band video for this one in early 2024.
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BAND STORY ANGLES / FUN FACTS:
1. Our bass player, Sam Kinghorn, played on our debut EP but left the band in 2020 to focus on his main band, Coppernicus. He rejoined the band in 2023 and has been a huge factor in the Never Reborn sound.
2. Ricky Williams recently joined the band and took over drum duties, his style is much more aggressive, and he is schooled in extreme metal, his playing style compliments our sound very well.
3. Expect a new single in early 2024, we will be releasing an old 80s punk/thrash song called “Suck it Anyways” which is heavily influenced by bands like SOD, Dr. Know, The Accused, etc. We tell people it’s a cover song when we play it live, but I wrote it way back in the 80s. The words are a little explicit, so it will remain a single.
4. We use two different tunings on the album. Half of the songs are in Drop-C# and the other half are in E♭ Standard. We have them separated throughout the album, which really adds some great dynamics, each song sounds so different from the next.
5. “Storms End” is another song that wasn’t originally going to be on the album. When we were setting up the mics to record the clean guitars on “Fallen One” I was playing random parts while Ryan adjusted the mic levels. I’d played the part before, years ago, and pretty much couldn’t remember it exactly, but I kept messing with it, by the time we were ready to record I decided to use it as an intro to the album.
L-R – Sam Kinghorn (Bass), Steve White (Guitar/Vocals), Ricky Williams (Drums)
Photo Credit by Never Reborn
Combining elements of Thrash, with touches of Black and Classic Heavy Metal, this 3-piece outfit from Arizona has an unmistakable sound all their own.
Independently released in March of 2023, their sophomore release “Ashes of Our Past” is a big step forward for the band. The maturity in their songwriting is evident, from the opening clean guitar passage of “Storms End” to the closing thrash attack of “Requiem (World of Hurt).
Sharing the stage with bands such as Soulfly, DRI, Master, Warbringer, Enforcer, Claustrophobia, Taipan, and Phobia, Never Reborn has refined their live performances and songwriting skills.
Discography:
2023 – Ashes of Our Past
2020 – What Darkness Brings
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