Throne of Heresy are relative newcomers to the world of death metal, only forming in late 2009. However, they’ve already popped their album cherry with 2012’s ‘The Stench of Deceit’, and are quick to follow up with this short taster EP to serve as a sampler for forthcoming new material. This physical release comes in an impressively professional digipak considering it’s a self-release (which quite often can be a world of photocopied covers, bad layouts and pen scribbled CD-rs), so that certainly was a promising start.
Musically, Throne of Heresy likes to throw all their influences in a blender when it comes to this EP, and they come up smelling of plastic roses more often than not. ‘Morning Star’ opens the album, with a powerful guitar tone battering out a mid-paced riff which reminds me of those loveable Vikings Amon Amarth (albeit, minus the Viking influence). Bursting with melody, rasping growled vocals and a metronomic, palm-muted attack of riffage, these guys have a great knack of writing memorable (if not a little clean for my liking) death metal. There’s a shedload of melodic runs, solos and most importantly good crunching guitar lines – all with regular paced rhythms to allow a good reliable mosh pit to form at live shows. Indeed, I’d imagine this music is perfect for the live environment; entirely lacking in technical, widdly bits and packed with solid, simple tempos throughout. Second track ‘Spawn of Atrocity’ ups the pace somewhat from the off, before falling into a steady mid-tempo face pounder, giving nods to the simpler spectrum of modern day Cannibal Corpse in their riffs, not to mention blowing solid chunks of the crunchier end of Obituary out of your speakers. To close we get another slow burner, ‘Souls to Suffer’, a chugging behemoth, laced with melody-filled licks and Six Feet Under styled musical carnage.
Overall, Throne of Heresy don’t yet have their own sound, far from it in fact. What they do have is a huge list of influences of which they meld into an enjoyable listen of a short EP. It’s very clean, well-produced and comes in a professional package, but I just feel it lacks the teeth to really bite deep into your musical jugular. Still, a decent enough effort for fans of melody packed modern death metal!
(6.5/10 Lars Christiansen)
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