Review by Sandre the Giant
Another day, another death/doom behemoth from my favourite label in the whole world, Transcending Obscurity. Now, that might be rank favouritism but when you have as consistent a quality and hit rate like this, you’re entitled to it. The new record from Arizona’s Thorn, ‘Evergloom’, has looked like it had huge potential based on early track previews, and it is out next month. A remarkably productive band, and sometimes it feels like there is always the potential for a dip in quality. Let’s find out.
I assumed opener ‘Spectral Realms of Ethereal Light’ would be an intro track but if it is, it’s the most structural powerful one I’ve seen for a long time. ‘Xenolith of Slime’ is next, snaking riffs crawling from the darkness into the sharp, angular light of death metal. This is the pervading sound that thunders throughout ‘Evergloom’; a powerful death/doom basis with just enough detours into uneasy dissonance to keep the comfort levels low and the brutality high. ‘Gaze of the Seer’ feels like churning magma, riffs torn from eternal rock and moulded in the fires of dissonance, while the bass led bludgening of ‘Phantom Noose’ belies its more complex songwriting. It’s so fucking intense and heavy that you have to listen to it a couple of times to appreciate the underlying technicality of it. Thorn’s work is subtly technical, lurking within vast gloom and unsettling atmospherics are plenty of riffs and melodies. You just have to know which layers to peel back. The doom part of the death/doom comes more from a feeling the music generates rather than any musical proclivities. This is death metal that is so apocalyptic that it has moved into foreshadowing our doom. There’s no massive 12 minutes pieces; one of the record’s most unsettlingly dense experiences is a mere 1.54. ‘Evergloom’ is a punchy record for one so perfectly soundtracking the cataclysms.
An album that feels like it has been dredged up from the eldritch caverns of its album art, ‘Evergloom’ is a record that redefines heaviness in 2023. TO have managed, over the years, to slow their release schedule a little but the quality level has somehow increased. ‘Evergloom’ could be their best release so far this year, a sinewy beast of indefinite form, but definite violence. Incredible stuff.
https://www.facebook.com/transcendingobscurityrecords
https://thorndm.bandcamp.com/album/evergloom
https://thornx.bandcamp.com/album/evergloom
The Killchain 