Anthropoid

This track honors a group of Czech paratroopers who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the brutal architect of the Final Solution during World War II. Randy Blythe explained the story behind the song to Rolling Stone. "When the Nazis came into Czechoslovakia, the Czechs put up some resistance. So the Nazis sent in Reinhard Heydrich, who is the 'Young Evil God of Death,' the 'Blonde Beast,' the 'Butcher of Prague.' As you can tell, he wasn't a pleasant person." "He destroyed the people of Prague and crushed their will, except for a group of Czech-born, British-trained paratroopers who were like, 'OK, we need to raise the morale of the Czech people. They carried out the only successful assassination attempt on a high-ranking Nazi Party official [Heydrich]. They f---ed this dude up and then hid out in the crypt of this church in Prague, the Cathedral of Saint Cyril and the Methodius, for about a month and then somebody ratted them out. There were seven of them left, and the Nazis busted in the church and a firefight ensued. Three were killed upstairs and they retreated to the crypt for, I believe, eight hours. Four men held off 800 Nazi storm troopers and eventually when they ran out of bullets, they killed themselves in the basement of that church." "You can go to the basement of that church and see where they were trying to dig out of the basement into the sewer system to escape . They fought until they were out of bullets." "Those dudes were what I consider superior men, and I wanted to honor them with a song. So that song is about them and killing the Butcher of Prague. It's an honor."