Verona On Venus, the industrial goth metal solo venture from DevilDriver guitarist Mike Spreitzer, have issued a new single titled “war baby“. Speaking on this track, he offered:
“When writing began for ‘Popular Delusions‘, I was unaware of what Verona on Venus would become. Time has allowed me to see it as an experiment that gave me answers to questions I was oblivious to at the beginning of the process. The future of VoV has become apparent. The fog has dissipated. I can clearly see the future of Verona on Venus now more than ever. ‘war baby‘ is a representation of that clarity.”
A press release further spelled out the inspiration behind the track:
“‘war baby‘ is a personal tribute to Spreitzer’s father, who was an infant during the aftermath of the Second World War. Of German descent, but born in Yugoslavia, Spreitzer’s family fled to the United States with the help of the Catholic Church. The family’s journey began by walking to an Austrian refugee camp and after a two-year wait, from there made their way to the United States on the USS General A. W. Greely ship.
‘My dad told me the story of my grandma having to give him sleeping pills so that he wouldn’t cry and alert the soldiers scattered around the border as they made their way to Austria,’ Spreitzer recalls. ‘He survived that 500+ mile trek as a tiny infant to the refugee camp in his mother’s arms as she carried him through the snow and rivers. Today, he’s the toughest man I’ve ever known.’
