By: Richard Maw
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 25/10/2015
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
The overall sound is powerful, creating a real sense of dread and has some really dark passages to it. If you are waiting for the next Conan record and fancy some Swedish doom, then check this one out for sure. It is powerful and dark and a fine debut by anyone's standards.
“Throneless” CD//DD//LP track listing
1). Masters Of Nothing
2). Cavedrones
3). Thinning The Herd
4). Reaching For The Dead
Throneless is:
Johan Burman | drums
Johan Sundén | guitar
Patrik Sundberg | bass
The Review:
Swedish doom/stoner/drone in the vein of a less aggressive but equally rumbling Conan- that just about sums this one up. The sound is incredibly low, the playing very slow and the whole effect is one of depth.
“Masters of Nothing” kicks things off with a medium paced (for the genre, that is) dirge. The vocals are distant and mixed well back, drenched in reverb. It would be true to say that a little of this stuff goes a long way, and the record features four tracks with nothing under eight minutes in length. With the song lengths and number of tracks the band has it spot on. No need to aim for an 80 minute playing time, just set up a groove, let it become hypnotic and thrown in a change or stop section every now and then. There is an arcane art to this type of stuff and the atmosphere combined with the groove is what the genre lives and dies by.
“Cavedrones” sounds exactly like, well, a droning doom metal band playing in a cave. Very slow, very heavy. To be totally objective, I am not a huge fan of the thudding snare sound (which was apparently recorded in a bucket in a separate room to the rest of the kit), but this is nit picking. The overall sound is powerful and appropriate. “Thinning The Herd” creates a real sense of dread (the longer the note... the more dread!) and has some really dark passages to it.
To cap things off, “Reaching For The Dead” creates a rather melancholy mood with its (gasp!) clean guitar opening and this is a very welcome addition to the record, bringing as it does a sense of light and shade. The rest of the track is probably the standout cut on the album for me- it's dark and plodding with a wistful feel and a great vibe.
