Review: Enthroned – Ashspawn

Review by Transmontanus

Enthroned – Ashspawn

Record Label: Season of Mist

Year: 2025

Rating: 7/10

Enthroned is one of those bands that requires no introduction. It is also one of those bands that has been able to navigate various stages of Black Metal evolution and remain relevant. Their last full-length album came out in 2019 (“Cold Black Suns”), and it was a marvellous example of how the band was, still, playing the Big League. Does “Ashspawn” bring forth a recreation of their music?

The trio – Nornagest, T. Kaos and Menthor – continues to push the band’s boundaries, and its sound is one of complexity and aggressiveness. Menthor is a superb musician, a magician, a craftsman who expresses himself via this amazing – and hellish – drumming. Never ignoring the overall craftsmanship that each one of these lads has, of course. Cutting guitar riffs, cold and demonic; possessed vocals, growls from the deepest of infernos, Enthroned is, again, under the spotlight, and success has been achieved.

Enthroned

This is a set of songs that need to be “slowly digested”; I do not consider it to be of easy absorption, which makes it a bigger – and more fulfilling – challenging, d’you know what I mean? It makes the listener sit down and let themselves become one with the music. I went to several listening sessions before I could consider that it was correctly understood. If I remember correctly, I did feel their previous one was more immediate, more in your face. This one, as stated formerly, requests more from the listener. The good thing about it is the challenge.

“Basilisk Triumphant” is a great example of what this album has for the listener: a powerful sound, an almost visceral emotion of hate and despise, it resembles of sound of the deepest pits of Hell, and I consider it to be majestic. Again, not as straightforward as their previous one, but equally formidable. Little over 43 minutes of Black Metal, the identity of older days, the dynamics of today’s sound. Enthroned has been able to master its craft with no compromise, never forgetting its roots, while forging new melodies and contemporary sounds. It is not easy to subsist in today’s Black Metal scene without giving in to pressures; I hail them for never conceding.