This is the third album from US doom band Aseethe.
2017’s Hopes of Failure is still one I regularly visit, (as I do all of their very tasty material), so I’m glad to see a new album appear again.
The album cover’s apocalyptic artwork ably sets the tone for this release, and Throes is the type of album that has hidden layers underneath the coming destruction. It’s almost as if the blatant end times aren’t enough, and other, subtler catastrophes are lurking just out of sight, held in reserve for the unlikely occurrence that the main event is somehow thwarted.
Massive chunks of weighty doom are slowly unleashed with the force of crashing skyscrapers. Slow, deliberate, and as inevitable as a natural disaster, the music unfolds with glacial intensity and colossal malevolence. Large parts of the album are hypnotically repetitive, with the band knowing precisely how long to draw a section out for, before changing direction in one way or another, usually with a certain amount of finesse.
There’s an anger here too though, and an aggression that seeps through the glacial paces like a malignant disease bubbling up to the surface. On the second shortest track here – No Realm – this seems to find its keenest expression, and it could almost be described as upbeat, albeit in a raging, wrathful way.
The latest Aseethe album is no disappointment, and Throes finds the band in apocalyptic fine form.
Highly recommended.
