Artist: Thurthul
Country: Poland
Label: Stronghold Clothes and Music / Werewolf Promotion / Wulfhere Productions
Formats: Cassette EP / CD EP
Year: 2023
Hate, Vengeance, Black Metal: the Polish one-man band Thurthul leaves little to the imagination when it comes to the genre of the latest EP. Three years have passed since the release of the debut full-length ‘Fury of Ancient Race’, and the music on the newest recording remains strongly inspired by Norwegian and Polish Black Metal. The bands that most strongly come to mind are Taake and Graveland, as ‘Hate, Vengeance, Black Metal’ has as similar epic undertone and a slight pagan touch. That at least applies to the songs ‘The Hour of the Wolves’ and ‘Blood Oath’. The other two tracks (leaving the synthesizer intro out of the equation) are a little bit more rocking and grooving in appearance and therefore have a certain flair of Carpathian Forest and Gorgoroth to them as well. With a suitably raw and gritty presentation, the result is twenty minutes of hateful and vengeful Black Metal, indeed much as promised by the title.
Compared to the earlier work, Grief (the creator of the band) has mostly made steps in terms of variation. While the debut album was a to-the-point record and could be credited for its straightforwardness, it was also somewhat one-dimensional. The latest EP has more subtle underlying melodies, changes in pace and alternation of riffs along with tracks that stick out individually. That doesn’t come at the cost of catchiness or coherence, and the EP certainly isn’t overloaded in riffs, but rather just better and more varied than before. So yes, you could say Thurthul is back with a vengeance, and ‘Hate, Vengeance, Black Metal’ is easily the band’s best effort to date.
