Godhate

Modern death metal can be a tricky venture. More often than not the listener would end up getting a faceload of staticy Hell with incomprehensible gruntwork floating about the morass of noise, and while this is something I can respect (violence for the sake of violence), there has to be some semblance of musicality to help truncate that rage into a something less akin to a jackhammer pounding to the beat of a TV with no reception. I was able to find that with a scant listen of this here THRONEAEON band and was pretty impressed with their ability to take the deathly wrath and turn it into something wholly listenable. This was only one single listen, however, and I didn’t know how much the group would evolve over time.

So I took to this full-length with both hands, horn-raised and at the ready…

Thankfully, there isn’t a sensation of "Attera Totus Sanctus" mimicry, and instead, THRONEAEON gives us two fistfuls of violent, scathing, and hateful death/thrash metal that dips into the fiery realm of early SLAYER with a chaser of "Covenant"-era MORBID ANGEL for that extra bought of maddening heaviness. There seems to be just a little bit of evolution between the first few songs I once heard and this full-length, but this still showcases a band totally on its mark. Thankfully more thrash than death, "Throneaeon" explodes from the stereo/CD player/what have you with repeated face-loads of slicing guitars, punishing drum bashing, distant thundery bass and angry-as-Hell growling vocals that would more than quench your thirst for all that is speedy, brutal, and impurely METAL. There’s a lot to enjoy with this 9-track wunderkind, where the overall performance is literally akin to a group of pissed-off Swedes shoving riffs and anti-religious rhetoric down your unwilling throats, as songs like "Heading Inwards", "In Loathing (For Your God)", and "Genocide in Grace" are able to properly portray the chaos and rage that isn’t readily available in many of these modern metal acts. THRONEAEON wants you dead, and by all that is unholy they’ll see to it.

So in the end I really dug this. Much enjoyment was present upon first listen, and it’s my hope that the future will give way to repeated listens. We shall see. Well done, fellas.

Considering not only that this band is meant to be "brutal death metal" and the amount of genuinely brutal bands on here that are simply referred to as "death metal", I honestly expected a little more from this album than was delivered.

To be perfectly honest, the only reason I even bothered checking out Throneaeon was because of a link from the Insision website and I rather foolishly hoped that seens as Insision liked them enough to put a link to them on their site, that it must be at least worth a casual listen.

Stick this album on and before you know it you're four or five tracks into the album, without so much hearing anything particularly new, interesting or dare I say it original - though some bored "experts" (read: elitists) would have you believe there's nothing original left in death metal anymore.

Whilst there may be an ever shrinking level of originality and unique sounds to modern death metal, when a band resorts to pretty much blatantly lifting riff after riff after riff from an album 4 years previous by one of the scenes pioneers and leading lights (namely Morbid Angel's 'Gateways To Annihilation') it's not just lame it's also really disappointing.

I guess the only reason I even gave this album higher than 50% is because I happen to be quite fond of that particular Morbid Angel album.

For a Morbid Angel tribute album to put alongside all the others, get hold of this album.
Don't buy it, as that'll only encourage them to go and do it all over again.

For an album that stands out above the dirge of copycat bland death metal bands, look elsewhere.