### Blood Red Throne: Monument of death

#### 02/09/09 || Habakuk

My ghostwriter is on holiday, and there’s no way I’ll think of an intro for this. I don’t do intros.

Somehow, this comes across as a very humorless album. I like that. It’s got a very clinical, dry production (fitting the white cover somehow), Mr. Hustler’s deep vocals sound like every word is barbed into his throat, there’s killing and dying aplenty, furthermore serious shredding and sharp, snappy drumming. These guys have been around for a while, but for my tastes they haven’t quite reached the greatness they produced on “Monument of death” again. Although I do enjoy their more recent stuff, this album here has something they all lack. The (enjoyable) production doesn’t kick as much butt as the later material managed to do, so that’s not it. I think it’s the fact that everything flows very well – and normally you might think a “but” comes next, yet it’s a “because”! – because many of the riffs and rhythms take changes when you least expect them, which results in a plethora of slaps into the fucken face, to put it in a reasonably sophisticated way. This is amplified by the contrast to the usually straightforward approach they bring forward, so make that a plethora of heavy slaps into the fucken face.

“Monument of death” is very high level stuff in terms of full-on but varied death metal, as it combines enough thrashy bits and pieces to keep a) the tempo high and b) the shredding everpresent. Note, this is not what is labeled with the overused term death/thrash. It’s death metal with thrashy bits and pieces, as in chocolate chip cookies.

And although many of the band members stem from a black metal background, I gotta say I don’t hear much of it, maybe a raspy edge to the guitar sound, and that’s it. That’s a bonus, in case you’re unfamiliar with my special relationship to black metal. Other than on their later albums, the bass really takes a subordinate role to the guitars here, which might be a shame because Erlend Caspersen sure is a mean bassist, but on here it’s okay the way it is. Namely, apart from a couple of short interludes that are filled with the bass guitar’s vacuum cleaner sound, there’s not much to hear from it. Maybe that’s something else that came out of the black metal days. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, as it provides more space for the absolutely ripping guitars and more killer-riff-headbangomania™. In that respect it’s like a crisper version of Sinister’s “Hate”. And that’s one bad-ass album.

The only small beef I have with these Norwegians is that after a while, it’s all a bit sameish, but then again this got so many spins in my CD player it’s not really surprising that it wore off a little bit. It can be done a little better, but just in terms of memorability. Apart from that, it’s all here. Skilled, modern death metal of the non-sucky (aka “technical”) kind. Count me in!

- Information
- Released: 2001
- Label: Hammerheart
- Website: Blood Red Throne MySpace
- Band
- Mr. Hustler: vocals
- Død: guitars
- Tchort: guitars
- Erlend Caspersen: bass
- Freddy Bolsø: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Portrait of a killer (testimony of the dying)
- 02. Souls of damnation
- 03. The children shall endure
- 04. Dream controlled murder
- 05. Mary whispers of death
- 06. Ravenous war machine
- 07. Malignant nothingness
- 08. Monument of death
- 09. Path of flesh