Anyone who picked up Ovtrenoir’s debut EP earlier this year may already have encountered the depths of intensity plumbed by DehnSora. His latest project to emerge, Throane, is even more crushing in many respects and much, much darker. A sonic blast at times so heavy and filled with its own emotional willpower you could almost believe it was capable of causing physical damage to urban structures – as well as your hearing. The video that goes with the pre-release track Un Instant Dans Une Torche is as clever and artfully driven as the music. A black and white ultra-slow motion delivery of a single image that only gradually becomes apparent as it unfolds – a thumb drawn across the throat, the old gangland signal telling you: ‘You’re dead’.
Throane’s debut Derrière- Nous, La Lumière (which even my fast decaying memories of schoolboy French can translate as Behind Us, The Light) has the same sludgy feel but the black metal influence this time around has most definitely come to the fore. The overall sound is perhaps best described as like a grinding, distorted journey into rhythmic, ritualistic black metal combined with the unsettling off-key menace of those master of discordant black metal Deathspell Omega (also from France) or Blut Aus Nord. But there’s an additional layer of industrial reverberation – like the bellowing gears of some giant, cityscape-levelling war machine grinding into terrifying motion.
Derriere-Nous is the kind of deeply disturbing, grim and grainy release you’d expect from Debemur Morti. An ambient noise-filled vision that combines a singular stylised concept with driving black metal. You, potential listener, will have to decide for yourself whether it crosses the line into pure concept rather than mere music. Because, while this is on one level very powerful stuff reaching right into the core of your psyche, on another I felt like at times the music folded back on itself into repetition in a way that left me feeling a little barren rather than enriched. All part of the experience, you might say. And yes, it is undoubtedly that and potentially more if this hits you at the right point in your thirst for something new and original.
Throane is an immersive experience which clearly comes from the gut and, for the most part, this towering and heavily distorted debut achieves what I suspect its creator set out to. This guy is producing some very interesting stuff at the moment and my guess is that what we’ve heard and seen so far (he’s also been involved in drafting cover art including Blut Aus Nord, Code, Amenra, Vorkreist and Ad Hominem) is only just the beginning. Because, whatever this is, it’s an intense experience that should have anyone looking for new experiences in intense, extreme music feeling like they’ve had a sharp, damaging blow to their long-term mental health.
(7.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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