This is the latest EP from US black metallers Thralldom.
Returning after an absence of a decade, the band have re-cast themselves and emerge as a reborn, terrifying proposition. Thralldom’s black metal delivers us a 28 minute release that sounds quite disturbing and individual.
The songs that they create are suffused with such horror and consternation that even when they’re playing aggressively it still sounds more unsettling than brutal. Thralldom take the dark, corrupt underbelly of black metal and inject it with a creeping feeling of impending doom and apocalyptic nihilism.
The tracks sound rickety and barely kept together, as if they’re going to fall apart at any moment. Far from being a bad thing though, this just gives the impression that the music is a barely sentient creature that has dragged itself into twisted existence and may disintegrate back into the underworld at any given point.
These tracks have lots of different touches and ideas incorporated into the relatively short playing time of the songs. Alongside the terror and fear that the band spread like a disease, moments of dying, sickened light and warped shade are used to great effect, as well as calmer moments of reflection and contemplation, as if the shambling horror that is Thralldom is considering its own existence before lashing out in pain once more.
With a corrupt heaviness and dark mood, Time Will Bend into Horror successfully creates morbid atmosphere with a whole heap of mutated depth.
This is an EP that has been worth the wait. Thralldom have returned in their full grim majesty, ready to tear down the light and wage war against the forces of good. Judging by this alone, it seems they’re going to win.
Wonderbox Metal 