Four years ago, longtime Converge frontman Jacob Bannon introduced his new heavy music supergroup Umbra Vitae. The band also includes former Hatebreed guitar hero Sean Martin, who’s currently in Twitching Tongues, as well as a couple of members of the Red Chord and an ex-Job For A Cowboy drummer. Now, Umbra Vitae are getting ready to follow up their 2020 debut Shadow Of Life with the new album Light Of Death, and we’ve already posted the frantic lead single “Belief Is Obsolete.” Now, they’ve followed that one with a deeply heavy track.

Umbra Vitae’s new song “Velvet Black” veers closer to traditional heavy metal than almost anything that I can remember Jacob Bannon singing in the past. It’s a lot slower and doomier than “Belief Is Obsolete.” Bannon’s vocals are deep and moody and relatively clean, and he groans and bellows over some truly heroic riffage. Here’s how Bannon describes the track:

Lyrically, this song is about pressure and how it forces actions that aren’t in line with who we want to be. It breaks and changes people, making monsters and the meek. These cycles of dysfunction indiscriminately harm everything around us. Metaphorically, I explore this in two interlinked ways. Firstly, the idea of growth coming from decay. Secondly, as an afterlife scenario where dead attempt to overrun golden gates. Not worthy of passing through due to their actions on the mortal plane, they retreat back into the “velvet black” darkness which they came from.

Below, check out director John Bradburn’s moody black-and-white video for “Velvet Black.”

Light Of Death is out 6/7 on Deathwish, Inc.