I love the way Dutch quintet Throwing Bricks has gone about its business in building up to releasing debut album What Will Be Lost. A preceding collection of three releases display a mired of influences and a willingness to experiment which gives a great insight into the creating of this album, almost in the same way as showing your working on a complex maths puzzle leads to how you found the answer. Whilst some of the ideas were very raw you can feel the mix of black metal, doom, post-metal and sludge slowly being melted together. On What Will Be Lost, Throwing Bricks has absolutely nailed the sound and the mix of influences are knitted together flawlessly and conveyed in an exciting and captivating release.
There is a superb richness in the recording as the vocals often take a similar place to those of Amenra just behind the guitar but raising slightly enough not to be lost in the drums. ‘The Day He Died’ is a great example of this and although the riff comes from a different angle than Amenra the vocals twist angstfuly in that middle ground fighting their way out. There is also a great play on the quiet/loud dynamic as the track sinks and rises with its heavy almost psych doom riff. ‘The Day He Died’ shows how effortlessly styles are interchanged as the ending ramps up right into ‘Constant Failure’, which features furious guitar work and some blinding blast beats.
The bands willingness to try different things is well emphasised in the first four songs where you travel from blackened doom, sludge and post-metal with a beautiful ease and you suddenly find yourself listening to the nightmare drones of ‘Ceremony’. Here the album slows down and cleanses before offering up another four tracks of varying pace and rhythm. The final two tracks are just an excellent way of rounding out the release as they both build from lower points and have some explosive quiet to loud sections with ‘Galling’ being particular catchy with it tremendous mix of blast beats and striking riffs.
This is a tremendous release which is recorded impeccably to give a real boost to the quality execution of ideas laid out within. There are no weak points, this is a very real contender to make it into end of year charts. Slow and steady wins the race and Throwing Bricks have released an absolute cracker after a lot of hard work forging the path they wanted to go down. I can’t wait to hear the next one.
