Ancient Thrones – The Veil [Full Length, 2020]
Ancient Thrones is a whole new identity of Abysseral Thrones, a band from Nova Scotia, Canada. With the old identity gone, so does their style. Ancient Thrones unveiled their new Black/Death Metal direction through their first full length ‘The Veil’ (preceded by a single The Soul to Flesh) on 6th November 2020.
The Veil offers 10 tracks of blistering Black/Death Metal with plenty of Scandinavian influences thrown in. The first thing I notice upon listening The Veil are the abundance of melodic riffings throughout. It’s not over the top melodies you often find in standard Heavy Metal, but rather fast, face melting melodic guitar playing, meaning you won’t find the riff overpowering with sufficient brutality to keep listeners pumped up.Seems like they’re keeping in mind to balance between being super ripping with violent riffs but also keeps you sticking around with melodic senses. The 9th track somehow toys around with US Melodic Death Metal (or Metalcore) style. I feel it’s kind of abrupt from all kind of Black/Death Metal from earlier tracks. In fact, it has Abigail Williams-eque touch from In the Shadows of a Thousand Suns era. It’s not bad, I enjoyed it, but it feels out of place.
The vocal works are pleasant to listen with ear piercing shrieks dominating the records, with trade-off with low growl sometimes shadowing in certain places. This gives a punchier depth to the tracks, rather than just bulldozing everything to oblivion. While drumming in The Veil is masterfully done with sick fills and technique, its’s eclipsed by a rather sloppy mix. Cymbals are overpowering the rest of the percussions and occasionally, the whole instruments. I find this to be a little annoying to waste good songwriting and effort but this… I’d rather say perhaps overlooked during production. Other than that, everything seems fine with me. Spend some time to listen to this debut, if you can get past the mixing problem.
The Veil is now available in digital download format.
FFO: Illnath, Catamenia, The Black Dahlia Murder, Revocation
