#300: Athens-based metal outfit W.E.B.

<p>Forged in 2002 out of a “necessity to scream, blast, and create emotions and get on stage to exchange them with an audience,” Greece’s <strong>W.E.B.</strong> have steadily forged a path to becoming one of the premier European symphonic extreme metal bands expressing darkness and death through adrenaline and poetry. An output that’s both candid and theatrical, <strong>W.E.B.</strong>is here to move you, provoke you, and invite you on a journey through raven dark and starless nights. With four albums already under their collective belt, 2021’s fifth full-length, <em>Colosseum</em>, is inarguably the band’s greatest and most direct work to date.</p> <p>“We wanted this album to be as straightforward as we could make it. We wanted it to be aggressive and to the point, and at the same time we have pushed literally everything, higher, faster, louder, harder. It is our most metal album,” states guitarist/vocalist Sakis Prekas.</p> <p>With <em>Colosseum</em>, the band welcomes two new members: drummer Nikitas Mandolas, who joined following the recording of 2017’s <em>Tartarus </em>and whose playing is perfectly suited to the music <strong>W.E.B.</strong> make, and bassist/vocalist Hel Pyre. “Apart from the great lyrics and the perfect bass performance, she offered her brutal and clean vocals on many parts of the album, leaving her own mark of fire. This is a completely new element for <strong>W.E.B.</strong> that really gave a unique character to the material.”</p> <p>With the lineup solidified, writing commenced in early 2019, sending ideas back and forth to one another, subsequently honing each song over many pre-production sessions. “With no references, when we make music, our only thoughts are that we want to make it sound as awesome as we can,” states Sakis. The dramatic orchestrations are of course a large part of that, with Christos Antoniou of Septicflesh handling this aspect of the sound as he has on previous <strong>W.E.B.</strong> releases. “Metal is the most revolutionary music genre ever to exist; adding