Blood Red Throne – Nonagon
Release Date: 26th January 2024
Label: Soulseller Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Aborted, Bloodbath, Decapitated, Cannibal Corpse, Hypocrisy, Misery Index.
Review By: Rick Farley
Norwegian death metal kings Blood Red Throne return for album number eleven, Nonagon, released by Soulseller Records. Originally formed by still remaining member Daniel Olaisen (guitar), when playing in Satyricon in the 90s. The band rounded out by original drummer, Freddy “the Shred” Bolsø, who returned in 2013 and Ivan “Meathook” Gujic (guitar) who has been on the Blood Red Throne team since 2010. Stian “Clammy Hackett” Gundersen (bass) joined in 2018, while Sindre Wathne Johnsen took over the vocals in 2023. Despite a revolving door of musicians throughout the bands twenty-six years of existence, Blood Red Throne has managed to maintain their energetic, groovy, riff driven version of kinetic death metal over the years with each new release. Never garnering the same prestige as several other bands in the genre, Blood Red Throne has been bringing quality death metal for quite some time and should be recognized for their entire catalogue, which I highly encourage you to dive into, if you already haven’t.
Nonagon is forty-one minutes of pure adrenaline fuelled death metal that doesn’t give the listener much chance to breath. Aggressive, infectious, well-crafted songs full of brutality, a little melody, and a whole lot of energy. Opening the album is Epitaph Inscribed, an ominous airy guitar with distorted chords ringing out in the beginning leads to a hella crunchy guitar riff that’s guaranteed to break necks. The pace quickens to speedy double bass and thick basslines before diving head first into a hellacious twisting barrage of death metal and coarse growls. Keeping the crushing momentum is Ode to the Obscene. A powerful track of varying speeds and mangled grooves. Menacing guitar melodies, hooky galloping, and serious disdain for your wellbeing. Every track on Nonagon is built off the crisp mid paced to speedy death metal guitar riffs over double bass, which lead to fat grooves and vomited out gutturals. There are a ton of influences that you can hear on Nonagon, but nothing jumps out as far as being blatant, and at times you’ll feel like you’ve heard this record before. As a BRT fan that’s perfectly fine, there will always be a place for bands and releases repping this style of death metal, but I can see this getting lost in the clogged machine, especially with the resurgence of OSDM overshadowing everything in the genre at the moment. That, however, should not deter you from jamming this beast into the nearest listening device and smashing everything nearby.
Overall, Blood Red Throne has returned with a solid, focused, high energy album. Albeit a little light in the originality department, this is for the death metal heads who just want to fuck shit up and headbang. Nothing here is going to immediately jump out as groundbreaking, and honestly I’m not sure it really needs to. Despite being somewhat predictable, there is comfort in knowing exactly what you’re about to get yourself into. If It ain’t broke right. In that respect, Nonagon delivers the goods and then some. You could say that’s actually the strength of the record. Rampaging familiarity. Killer solos, fast crunchy riffs, hooks galore and shouty growled vocals. Sometimes that’s all you fucking need.
(3.5 / 5)
