Throes’ Raging New Sludge Metal Album Quickly Proves Inescapably Captivating

The Idaho-based heavy-hitting band Throes’ new album In The Hands Of An Angry God bursts with captivating and inescapable energy right from the get-go. The name heralds the musical style well. This energy feels potently and directly destructive, and the band deliver relentless surges well-poised to course right into your psyche. Exemplified both by some of the lyrics and the eventual turn towards atmospheric build that the new Throes album takes, the band seem directly concerned with getting some fire under your step. In that creation’s wake, you’ve got little choice but to get moving (mentally at least) thanks to the sheer power inherent in the oppressive thickness of what Throes deliver.

Throughout the band’s new album, they maintain this kind of fascinating synthesis of raw animalistic fury with a more “human” attention to detail. As the release proceeds, a feeling emerges of a powerful monster stepping out of a pit of sludge — and you eventually realize that the monster is what you see when you look in the mirror. The band really effectively get to you in a way to make that feeling possible, incredibly strikingly incorporating atmosphere and even a whole song with dour and morbid but clean vocals among the raging tides of their overall fury that itself devolves to an occasional point of blisteringly fast, abruptly shifting playing. The album ultimately sits well outside of any genre considerations, but it’s thoroughly positioned as a welcome addition to the roster of recent creations turning heavier textures on their head and making something to stick with you above the noise.

Mostly, Throes feel simply like one of the heaviest metal bands you can imagine, unveiling raging melody through music with an utterly devastating weight. Around every corner, they do not compromise their willingness to portray their aims with the absolute maximum energy and impact possible — and why shouldn’t they? The passion permeates this record, and it feels well at home as a release from the luminary U.K. label for boundary-pushing underground heavy music Holy Roar Records. This band’s heaviness jumps out of its box and wraps its claws right around you, dragging observers along for the journey of constructing power among social and personally emotional wreckage.

5/5 Stars

The full album drops July 26. Listen to some below.