It has been thirty years since drummer / vocalist Jonas Renske and Anders “Blackheim” Nyström began a musical journey that would see them evolve from a studio-only project exploring their darker musical tastes to becoming one of the most respected purveyors of melancholic and post-Gothic music; always evolving with each album, embracing Gothic and progressive metal, and always distinctively Katatonia.
In contrast to the darker doom path that Grief Collector established with 2019’s From Dissension To Avowal, their first proper full-length shows more direct connections to singer Robert Lowe’s past projects. ‘Corridors’ opens En Delirium (Petrichor Records) in a similar fashion that ‘Falling’ started off Solitude Aeturnus’s Through The Darkest Hour, featuring a catchy Grunge groove and lofty vocal lines. There are even some Classic Metal touches comparable to the most recent Tyrant album on ‘Our Poisonous Ways’ and ‘The Letting Go.’
For the most part, Thronehammer’s second full-length is poised to offer the same colossal Battle Doom as 2019’s Usurper Of The Oaken Throne. Incantation Rites (Supreme Chaos Records) features a similarly expansive runtime at seventy-five minutes long with the individual songs putting in the same mix of drawn-out lengths and monolithic tempos. This continuation would raise concerns of recessing into stagnancy, but the band hones their focus while picking up a couple of new tricks along the way.