Well lookie what the cat dragged in... Right, if you're a fan of Thornspawn you might as well skip this part – slap this baby on your CD-player, turn up the volume and sit back while this searing split incinerates any remaining nerve cells you've got left and once again leave you with that familiar grin of stupefied satisfaction. For the few (or many?) who've never before heard of Thornspawn let me take a different approach than most: instead of cataloguing their usual merits and/or peeves, parading the ever-so hackneyed epithets such as "furious", "blasphemous" et al in the process, I’ll employ a negative ontology of sorts. First of all Thornspawn don’t give a shit. They don’t care if they sound "the same" or if they sound like "a hair dryer stuck in the maximum setting”. They don’t care if their output to date doesn’t follow the zeitgeist of their niche either - things like "trendy" and "conformity" are terms they have been estranged with for a long, long time now. Thornspawn don’t like melody. Period. Thornspawn's drummer doesn’t so much play as blast and their vocalist doesn’t so much sing as growl/shriek/scream as if his bollocks were set ablaze. Thornspawn are most certainly NOT available for children's parties. Thornspawn aren’t exactly sheep prancing gleefully amidst the flock. As a matter of fact, within this particular context they'd probably be some disease-stricken wolf that not only maims and kills any unlucky quadruped that might un-knowingly cross its way but also finds some inexplicable joy in pissing on its headless carcass. And finally Thornspawn don’t like you - yes YOU; they want you dead and they want you NOW. Now that we got this rather tongue-slightly-in-cheek prelude out of the way, let me clarify that I’m not your typical, zealous Thornspawn fan. Far from it. Although their signature album ‘Wrath of War’ - especially - has enjoyed quite a lot of spin time on my CD-player, I wouldn’t generally describe them as the ideal afternoon pastime nowadays. Nevertheless, on their side of this musical dish they effectively maintain their high-octane, abrasive style. Indeed, from a strictly compositional perspective, they haven’t changed much: lead by a raw percussive delivery, they’ve dutifully retained their old-school Possessed-cum-Tormentor-tainted edge (sans the solos…), albeit in some parts admittedly more prominent than others. However there is a distinctive shift in their textural set-up since they’ve opted for a thinner and 'treblier' guitar tone thus conferring their sound with a more razor-sharp/angular quality. Alrighty then, ‘nuff said; now unto Enshadowed...
Now this certainly is a blast from the past. I remember when I first came across their demo ‘Cremation Odes’ some 8 years ago. For the more romantically inclined black metal aficionados, their black metal at the time was a riveting conflation of Norwegian aggression and Swedish melodicism. Gradually afterwards the inevitable happened: the death metal virus struck and it slowly and steadily metastasized, eventually by their album “Intensity”, taking hold of just about everything, from rhythm section to guitar work at the expense of their erstwhile engaging emotiveness. Surprisingly enough though, on this very split where I’d expect them to just sit back, bite their nails and watch with perverse admiration while Thornspawn mercilessly plow through yet another helpless virgin, Enshadowed pound forth with relentless percussion and string-propelled thrust. They even manage to steal the center-stage more than a few times with a boisterous combination of militant dynamics and dissonant, straight-up riffage which is quite reminiscent of Arkhon Infaustus and even Antaeus from their later catalogue. As a matter of fact, the abovementioned signifies a deviation of their stylistic axis towards a more Gallo-Swedish tangent – which progressively perhaps is the best step they could’ve made.
I could’ve easily ended the review here but oddly enough there is still something nagging me at the back of my mind that my writer’s conscience (is there such a thing now? I wonder…) won’t allow me to dispense with. The fact is both bands deliver the goods with a febrile tenacity and technical conviction which, ipso facto, elevate them above a mediocre stature. But at the end of the day what we have with this aesthetical hyperbole is yet another bucket-load of the same, re-re-regurgitated ideology that ultimately smashes itself against the inevitable cul-de-sac that befalls any artistic expression, of one form or another, that has outstretched its temporal prime. Especially when it comes to Thornspawn, no matter what retro-traditionalist brand you might want to bestow upon these sort of offerings, such as “true”, ”cult” or whatever, after a couple of listens they sound monochromatic and tiring to my desensitized ears. Yeap, it’s good stuff but not really my cup of tea. Not anymore.
(originally written for Diabolical Conquest - 2008)
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