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THE CROWN
Crown Of Thorns

Metal Blade (2024)
Rating: 7/10

Embarking on their 12th album, Swedish quintet The Crown churns out another consistent expression of melodic death n’ thrash. Original guitarist Marcus Sunesson has recently rejoined the fold alongside bassist Mattias Rasmussen and drummer Mikael Norén, both of whom joined in 2022, while guitarist Marko Tervonen and singer Johan Lindstrand remain from the early days.

Crown Of Thorns, as one would expect, is a solid return that dishes out plenty of melo-death grooves and rages hard while also serving up occasional experimental streaks, particularly on the opener ‘I Hunt With The Devil’ which has a dash of raging black metal in its design.

The album is littered with aggressive yet melodious riffs, particularly ‘The Agitator’ with its thrashy nature and the gnarly scowling ‘Churchburner’ where Lindstrand growls, “The night is endless, covenant obscure, churchburner dead and alive. Warm blood in the freezing cold, Nosferatu vomit the cross”.

Naturally the sound of The Crown becomes familiar, and the band hasn’t made many tweaks since their previous outing Royal Destroyer (2021). Obviously having Sunesson back in the fold is a blessing and songs like ‘God-King’, with its touches of At The Gates, certainly benefit from his additional steel, as does ‘Where Nightmares Belong’. Most importantly the fat seems to have been trimmed and the production results in a rougher sounding outing bolstered by a blackened edge.

My only criticism here is that my two favourite songs, ‘No Fuel For God’ and ‘Eternally Infernal’, are presented as bonus tracks alongside the equally vicious ‘Mind Collapse’. Even so, the album will appeal to most with its burly thrash riffs and darker moods, especially with ‘Howling At The Warfield’ with its Slayer-esque potency. The Crown continues to do what they do best and that’s fine by me.

Neil Arnold

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