Band:	This Gift Is A Curse
Album:	A Throne Of Ash
Style:	Black metal, Hardcore, Sludge metal
Release date:	June 2019

01. Haema
02. Blood Is My Harvest
03. Thresholds
04. Gate Dweller
05. Monuments For Dead Gods
06. Wolvking
07. I Am Katharsis
08. In Your Black Halo
09. Wormwood Star

I desperately need behind-the-scenes footage of how the album cover picture was taken.

I have listened to This Gift Is A Curse before and did like them, but I cast them aside as just good blackened sludge that I won't listen to often, but that was enough to pique my interest when I saw this evocative cover art. This album did switch hands in the reviews queue up until I decided to take matters into my own hands. Because A Throne Of Ash is the perfect album for folks who cannot decide between blisteringly fast brutality and expansive atmospheres.

Melding dissonant black metal a la Deathspell Omega into some chaotic hardcore and take it into atmospheric sludge metal bordering on post-metal, taking the heaviness and darkness of it to new highs (or rather new lows). And to top it all off have it start with some industrial noise to make even more intimidating. So to say that A Throne Of Ash is heavy would really not feel enough to describe how violent and visceral and suffocating it feels regardless of the pace and the sounds it approaches, so whether in a hardcore mood or an atmospheric post mood, it never stops feeling like it aims for the heaviest it can possibly deliver. And it delivers.

So despite its ambition of being as pummeling as possible, A Throne Of Ash is still a pretty multifaceted record, if the number of genres I mentioned taking part of the mix doesn't give that away. It feels like the band not only achieved the bludgeoning brutality, but also managed to create a sinister and bleak atmosphere to go with it. A lot of it is due to the production, but I really have to give nods to the shrieks and the visceral drum performance as well, both of which are enhanced by the aforementioned production, ready to make an already difficult listen even more uncomfortable and suffocating. And quite pivotal to what I described so far, it never feels like the band is trying to hard, but that everything fell into place to deliver this monstrosity, feeling completely in control of the chaos they forged.

Dense, blistering, dark, and suffocating. No buzzword makes A Throne Of Ash enough justice.