Throwing Bricks are from the Netherlands and play post-metal/sludge. This is their second album.
The Burden contains 46 minutes of music that mixes together elements of sludge, hardcore, and black metal into a bleak post-metal cocktail. The band’s hybrid approach to their art is compelling, and The Burden offers fans of modern sludgy extremity a feast of scathing vocals and anguished riffs to explore.
Imagine a mix of Hexis, Amenra, Celeste, Cult of Luna, Cowards, Downfall of Gaia, and Deafheaven, and you’ll have a very rough idea of what Throwing Bricks get up to on The Burden.
Throwing Bricks provide a heavy assault of punishing brutality and emotional weight. Their music balances sheer heaviness and destructive ferocity against mood-based intensity and feeling-rich atmosphere. These latter aspects of Throwing Bricks’ sound prevent them from becoming a one-dimensional proposition, and instead allow them to be the layered and emotive force that they are.
The underpinning hardcore elements provide plenty of lean muscle, beating and crushing with merciless aggression. Sludge metal’s caustic fierceness and harsh apocalyptic atmosphere is merged with this hardcore base, blending the two into music that hits hard and repeatedly. Added to this are blackened flourishes, which allow for a serrated emotive edge to tear through the thick distorted waves of the songs. Dark melodies are used that are reminiscent of those deployed in blackgaze, while the post-metal build/release mechanic is effectively realised.
The Burden is a grim journey into oppressive despair and violent catharsis. On this record Throwing Bricks have created a sea of tar-thick darkness for the listener to drown in, and then filled this blackened ocean with knives, barbed wire, and rose petals. If this appeals, then make sure that you check out The Burden and don’t miss out.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 