Thronehammer are an international doom metal band and this is their fourth album.
Thronehammer return! Glory! With the mighty Slay | Kill | Erase Thronehammer unleash yet another colossal slab of doom heaviness on the world, and it’s as massive as you’d want it to be. Prepare thyself for Thronehammer!
Not familiar with Thronehammer? Well, it’s time to get on board with what they do. Both 2021’s Incantation Rites and 2023’s Kingslayer made year end list appearances in their respective years, so at this point the band have an enviable track record. With that in mind, what can album number four bring us?
Slay | Kill | Erase takes Thronehammer’s doom metal and expands it, while retaining a large amount of what made the band so bloody ace in the first place. In practice, this means that Thronehammer’s iron-hard metallic chassis has been customised further, with all manner of bolted on enhancements.
Slay | Kill | Erase is a 73-minute behemoth that’s come to destroy everything and lay waste. The band augment their core delivery with greater melodic colour, allowing the songs to breathe multihued air. Slay | Kill | Erase has commanding atmospheres, with a wider scope than previously achieved. From the epic to the bleak, from the stirring to the despondent, Thronehammer craft songs that immerse as they crush. Embedded within this even deeper than they were previously are death and death/doom metal structures, giving the album a harsher edge, which complements the greater mood-focused aspects on this album, (some of which are quite beautiful in places, albeit it is a dark beauty). And that’s to say nothing of the lashings of extreme metal intensity that pepper the release like snarling predators. Alongside all of this, Thronehammer still know how to shape a potent riff too.
Put another way, Slay | Kill | Erase finds Thronehammer placing a greater empathsis on atmospheric soundscapes, old-school death/doom, absorbing melody, and focused aggression. Taken together, it has allowed the doom metal heart of the band to have been fleshed out naturally.
The singing, as usual, is great. Overall there are less clean vocals and far more growls, roars, and screams. In a way this is a little bit of a shame as the singer has such a strong voice. However, she gives a consistently strong performance across the board. The singer’s vocals, (and Thronehammer as a whole), are on fire. Compared to some of the songs, a track like Blade to the Heart is a good example of where Thronehammer ramp up the band’s epic doom roots wonderfully once more, with the singer’s powerful cleans in ascendence. However, even this track takes a more multifaceted route to what the band might have done with a song like this in the past, both vocally and musically. There’s also a guest lead vocal spot on the closing song Onwards to Oblivion by Max Hemmann from Motorowl. Unlike most guest vocals which add very little, this is a real treat.
Yes, Slay | Kill | Erase is Thronehammer’s most diverse and accomplished record, while importantly not losing the bulk of the band’s inherent character. From funeral doom to savage extremity, Slay | Kill | Erase is the sound of a band having their cake and devouring it. This is Thronehammer 2.0; the same, just increasingly textured and wise.
Slay | Kill | Erase is a record that you’ll absolutely want to spend a lot of time with in 2026 if you’re in any way a doom fan.
Essential listening.
