An extraordinarily epic and evocative work, a long doom/sludge procession that knows no pause but continues undaunted in its march in the direction of Olympus, as the army advances inexorably toward victory or defeat and the notes of this monumental work accompany the warriors’ cadenced pace. Thronehammer are a trio combining musicians from Germany and the United Kingdom, and after a demo and a split, together with Lord Of Solitude, they release via The Church Within this monolithic and very heavy first album, entitled Usurper of the Oaken Throne. Seven tracks for almost eighty minutes of music of doom, truly evocative, heavy and epic to the point of routing any small group all shields and swords. In this work, the evocative and epic part of the sound blends perfectly with a very powerful doom/sludge, often made even more solemn by overflowing keyboards: the power of the rhythmic part gets in touch with an evocative vocal that accentuates the epic/guerrilla aspect of the sound in tracks that mostly exceed well over ten minutes. The seventeen minutes (precisely) of the opener Behind The Wall Of Frost drop us into an atmosphere in which the evocative power of a music that manages to incorporate into the same textures, in an absolutely convincing way, inspirations ranging from Bathory to Count Raven, from Celtic Frost to Saint Vitus, from Candlemass to Cathedral, in a sort of sludge version of traditional epic doom, predominates. The result is a very heavy work, to be tackled with due patience, trying to enter the world created by Kat Shevil Gillham, Stuart Bootsy West and Tim Schmidt without missing a single note of their remarkable work. (A.Centenari – MetalEyes 1/6/19)

2019 – The Church Within Records