Hailing from the  depths of Edinburgh, Scotland, the excellently named Of Spire & Throne play a crusty form of doom metal, not the classic, wailing kind, but a brutish, base level, burly, sludgy kind of doom- befitting Scotland’s craggy, rough landscapes.

This 3 song EP is the band’s third EP in as many years and clocks in at 30 minutes, so it not a brief EP, and all three songs deliver a big, fuzzed out take on doom/sludge metal with a nice beefy tone and earthy, gruff bellows. Well traveled metal fans will hear nods to fellow Brits (not for long though)  Conan (notably in guitar tone) , Evoken, and even Spain’s Horn of the Rhino (without the clean croons) as well as the holy trinity of UK doom, but here in typically Scottish fashion, it’s dirtied up and scuffed up from tussling with more sludgier, grimier and blacker bands like Highgate and other Total Rust Music bands.

The three songs, never break stride all rendered with a slow, cavernous gait and nary a glimmer of hope or light able to break the crawling miasma. Only a small refrain amid the closing 13 minute standout track “Cascading Shard” breaks rank with a nice, rare atmospheric moment among gargantuan, crumbling riffs . Otherwise it’s  thick, churning, barbiturate ridden lopes for patiently tribal percussive lurch of first track “Legacy and second track, “Tower of Glass” with its painfully measured, fuzzed out build and instrumental ebb.

I’d like to see what these Scots can do with a full length, though I imagine it would be a torturous listen, it would be one I would welcome if they can keep up the quality for more than 3 songs and thirty minutes.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments