The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die are back today with their first new studio recording since 2021’s awesomely metallic Illusory Walls. “Augeries Of Guilt” keeps up that epic, expansive feeling as David Bello sings about the “villains” in our stories who are killed by history’s winners.

Bello elaborates:

The people in stories that get labeled as heroes are often brutal killers, capable of extreme greed and cruelty on behalf of their allies’ and their desires. This song tries to smudge historical and present-day conflicts with the emotions of loss and vengeance.

It’s about the queasy feeling of rooting for a matador. The unease at the prospect of voting for a president when the lesser-of-two-evils has been enabling genocide, and the dystopia of an AI called Lavender determining its own morality of family annihilation.

I’d like to dedicate it to a number of people and things:

-Dan Moses, a Lebanese man from West Virginia who stood as tall as Goliath and had the kindest heart.

-Humbaba, the protector of the Cedar Forest in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh.

-Paulo Paulino Guajajara, killed by government corruption and private industry while protecting an uncontacted tribe in Brazil.

-Khaled Nabhan, Bearer of the Last Goodbye.

-Abdullah Maarouf’s olive groves in Deir Ballut, destroyed by the waste of oppressors, as well as all the olive oil not being made due to political destruction.

The song is suitably sweeping and dynamic to match those big ideas and heavy sentiments. Listen below.