“Of Feathers and Flames:” Enthroned are Back!

Enthroned’s 2012 album Obsidium was was both incredible and incredibly underrated. This is the part where I’d normally link to a 2012 article I wrote in which I heaped oodles of praise upon Obsidium and implored MS readers to check it out, except apparently I didn’t write one because I’m a giant doofus. And to think I was *this* close to placing Obsidium on my Top 15 Albums of 2012 list… shame on me.

Let me rectify that grave misdeed by starting out early in the cycle of Enthroned’s brand new one, Sovereigns, their 10th (!) studio album. Back when Obsidium came out I saw plenty of Internet rage in which “metal experts” expressed their closed-minded opinions that Enthroned were better “back in the day” and blah blah blah, but frankly I think the complete opposite is true: they’re way better now! This opinion is going to inspired all sorts of butthurt, misguided cries of “poseur” or demands that I “fact check” (as if that has anything to do with it) — and Enthroned’s importance to ’90s black metal certainly is not lost on me —  but this band’s early material sounds relatively pedestrian (especially by today’s standards) whereas their new stuff is way more interesting. Enthroned are just reaching their creative peak now, ten albums and twenty years into their career. I know there have been a bazillion line-up changes and only one member remains from the early days, but sometimes change is a good thing. Even Sovereigns has two new players on it.

And so: check out the brand new Enthroned track “Of Feathers and Flames” below. I like it because it defies genres — the same way Behemoth have evolved into a mammoth beast of their own from their black metal beginnings, so have Enthroned. And it’s catchy, and heavy, and intense, and all of the things.

Sovereigns comes out on April 15th via Agonia Records.