Blasting out of a renaissance of brutal death metal, where each beat gets deeper and deeper into territory best left to the torture chambers, Blood Red Throne take no prisoners on new album Siltskin. From Norway to your ears, in a cavalcade of grinding riffs and intense blasts of deathened sound, this death metal band take both groove and technical prowess and throw it all into a blender.
A microcosm of their sound, opening track ‘Scraping Out The Cartilage’ does exactly what is says on the tin and scrapes out whatever was left of your brain on to a gory platter of technical death metal. Never quite sitting still in on place, it switches from intense riffing, to groove metal, into progressive death with lashings of guitar solos. No time to breathe though as next up is ‘Beneath The Means’ which literally stomps you out of existence. Death metal has rarely sounded so much fun.
Twelve albums deep (and there’s some exploring for this listener to do!), Blood Red Throne sound as if they are fresh out the blocks and eager to impress. The years will not deplete their yearning for a great riff, an explosive growled vocal, and sure, a bit of fun in the meantime. Rejoice as the gears shift in ‘Husk In The Grain’ and you feel the song careening out of control, marvel at the phased guitars at the start of ‘Necrolysis’ (a track which develops into a full on progressive masterpiece churned from the depths of hell), or simply throw yourself head on into the swirling pit of noise that is ‘Anodyne Rust’. All life is here, just don’t expect to come out of it alive.
It’s not all in your face brutalising riffs mind, and these cats know what the are doing. The melodic guitars on ‘Vestigial Remnants’ demonstrating a keen ear for, well, melody. They do keep it at a minimum though, and offset this with some particularly blackened vocals. Later on they take on a doomier template with ‘Marrow Of The Earth’, although its not long before this dissolves into intense blasts.
You would do well to check this album out, particularly if you are of the mind to hear some excellent technical death metal. It retains enough of its brutal edge to not veer too far in that direction, which keeps things nice and filthy, but does allow for some variety. Another fine addition to the great pantheon of metal albums released this year.
