Album review: Acid Throne – Kingdom’s Death

Some bands are undeniably to the dark manor born. Acid Throne already feel like one of them. The East Anglian collective have only been a going concern for a couple of years, but they already wield the bludgeoning force and suffocating weight of some ageless Eldritch horror. Drawing in fuzzed-up elements of black metal, hardcore and stoner around a gravitational core of pendulous doom, debut album Kingdom’s Death proves a staggering first statement, crafted from shadow and fire.

From the moment sludgetastic eight-minute opener Death Is Not The End spills from the speakers, it is clear they're not fucking around. A striking epic of buzzing atmospherics and scourging vocal work, there is something truly stirring in its balance between beauty and dread. River (Bare My Bones) adds a little death metal rumble and groove, before King Slayer swaggers through with a sackful of deliciously munchy riffage and fists-aloft vocal hooks, and War Torn veers into more melancholic territory, stacking gorgeously mournful guitars around a midsection of blastbeaten blackened fury.

With Conan’s Chris Fielding on production duties, each of the six songs here sound utterly titanic. For music far more interested in blunt force bludgeon than any kind of nuance, that sense of solar plexus-thumping heft is essential. Hallowed Ground delivers mightily, all gut-wrenching, bowel-loosening churn. But it’s eleven-minute closer Last Will & Testament that delivers the ultimate proof of Acid Throne’s capabilities: an inexorable drift into the void capped off with the sound of waves lapping at a shore.

For an album obsessed with the inevitability of our endings, it’s thrilling testament to a great British outfit who’re still just getting started.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Crowbar, Down, Acid Bath

Find Out is out on November 8 via Trepanation