Album Review: thrown – Excessive Guilt

These last 5 years or so have seen quite a lot of renovation going on within metal. One of the major trends taking place was undoubtedly the rise of hardcore-adjacent metalcore bands, your Knocked Looses, Alpha Wolfses, Kublai Khan TXs. Few of these bands have achieved so much success so quickly as the Swedish quartet thrown. Formed only in 2021, in their three years of activity, they have already managed to amass the mammoth amount of 80 million streams on Spotify, with around 1.5 million concurrent listeners. All of this without having released an album. Safe to say that ever since their debut album Excessive Guilt back in the end of may, expectations within the general “-core” spheres shot up.

Compared to their last EP, Extended Pain, much of the aggressive and straight to the point hardcore essence that sounds like getting punched in the face through your speakers remains, but now in a more polished, perfected manner. Songs such as “dislike” and the single “nights”, for example, still sound like 2 minutes of some of the most pissed-off music out there, not too dissimilar to “grayout” off of the EP. On the other hand, “bitter friend” and “look at me” flirt a lot with elements of hip-hop and trap for example. While some may see that as a bad thing, a step towards overcommercialisation, as it is executed very well, it should be seen as a great opportunity to get new people into the style.

Of the 5 songs that have not yet been released as singles at the time of writing this review (mid-august), “ignored” stands out as a great piece of “punch a hole through the wall music”, clocking it at the impressive mark of 1 whole minute, but managing to insert everything from weird, dissonant ascending and descending riffs to a nasty breakdown (which basically takes up the back half of the song), ending off with an impactful “ignored by God” lyric being screamed at you, perfectly bookending the minute-long auditory barrage. “bloodsucker”, the following track, keeps up the high energy with a similar choppy, high-pitched riff and punching drums, slightly calming down around 30 seconds in, but then coming back with a great deal of groove, more trap drums and some more insane breakdowns. Out of all the songs in Excessive Guilt, “bloodsucker” is probably the one with most accurately captures all of the ground thrown manages to cover.

If you like what we do, consider joining us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!

Closing sequence “vent” and “so done” stand out not only because of their avalanche of sonic aggression, but also due to their lyrics, which – especially in “vent” – can get quite personal and reflective, offering objective, quick and harsh comments towards the way the elusive “system” works . “vent” is pummeling, just blow after blow after blow. The groovy yet pounding percussion paired with the aforementioned tough lyrics create a final result which can be enjoyed both as a song to just turn your brain off and lift weights, but also as the soundtrack to a rebellion. “so done” on the other hand, leans more over to the metalcore side of things, initiating with a chuggy, almost simplified-djent riff, followed by a hi-hat oriented groove and almost rap-like flow to Marcus Lundqvist’s vocals, basically already guaranteeing its place as that one song where some baffling spinkicks, flying knees and whatnot will rule over the moshpit.

All in all, in spite of Excessive Guilt lasting just barely over 20 minutes, it is able to set itself apart as one of the pound for pound most brutal releases of this year. Throughout its 11 songs, there is not one dull moment. It is a textbook example of an album that is all killer, no filler. Its 20 minute duration also works heavily in its favour, making it an album you can just quickly throw (no pun intended) on for your morning jog or something, and quickly get over it. I highly doubt anyone will be able to listen to it only once though, as behind the initial layers of modern caveman-like brutality, there is a lot of nuance and experimentation to be discovered. This debut album perfectly treads the thin line between truly heavy music and things that could go viral on the internet, or be sold to the masses. We may just be witnessing a revolution in the hardcore world, and thrown could be at the forefront of it.

Don’t fancy Patreon? Buy us a one-off beverage!

Excessive Guilt is released 30th August. The band tour Europe until August  24th. Album and tickets available from https://arisingempire.com/excessiveguilt

Check out all the bands we review in 2024 on our Spotify and YouTube playlists!

Header image by Aslak Junttu.

thrownfacebook | twitter | instagram | spotify | tiktok

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
trackback
December 13, 2024 1:35 PM

[…] in support of their debut album Excessive Guilt, released earlier this year via Arising Empire and which Daniel reviewed for us. With support from Crystal Lake, Unity TX and Graphic Nature, this is a showcase of the very best […]