ALBUM REVIEW: The Burden – Throwing Bricks

There’s arguably no better way of whipping the post-metal crowd into a frenzy, than by comparing a band to the likes of AMENRA or OATHBREAKER. The very mention of genre masters like these is enough to get pulses racing and expectations heightened. For a band to then also divulge that they have worked with AMENRA‘s very own Tim De Geiter on their latest offering, it makes for an incredibly tantalising prospect. That’s the exact route taken by Utrecht’s THROWING BRICKS for their sophomore album, The Burden.

Following their 2020 debut What Will Be Lost, this marks a natural evolution in maturity and message. Where that debut was all about experiencing loss, The Burden is more about how we cope with that loss, as well as coping with mental health issues, and brings an overall more positive, hopeful outlook. This is reflected through major chords that are brimming with hope, all the while paired with anguished screamed vocals that evoke AMENRA‘s own Colin H. van Eeckhout. This levity really comes to the fore on the likes of The Burden Noose and opener Bricks Of Grace. Spectacularly heavy in their overall execution, it elevates these positive instrumental accents to another level.

The Burden does still include some more morose and sombre numbers, such as the enveloping Doubt, or the funeral doom-inspired Safta. Slow burning, atmospheric and psychologically brutal, THROWING BRICKS display a special talent for making the listener care. This is an album that fans will become deeply invested in.

This all comes to a head on the spellbinding and spine tingling Hall Of Mirrors. Preceded by the instrumental set up of Endless Blockade, Hall Of Mirrors gets right into the thick of it, with a drummed three count signalling a full band explosion of noise. Vocalist Niels Koster lays down his most textured and engrossing performance to date, while the guitars of Jesse Stey and Marius Prins are so rich and full bodied, and the rhythm section fills out a fast-paced and hefty barrage of noise. With emotions heightened and nerves already in tatters from the unrelenting aural agony, the coup de grace comes from a spoken word performance from artist Shira van der Wouden, in which she laments the tragic loss of an unknown character. Becoming more frantic in grief and desperate in delivery, the repeated, sobbed screams of “the tragedy became so real” become deeply upsetting. It culminates in a soul-cleansing and cathartic outpouring of grief-stricken roars and howls, underpinned by a blustering instrumental that starts delicately and builds to a heart-rending and affecting passage that perfectly accompanies in its juxtaposition. This isn’t just a highlight of The Burden, this is a highlight for all sludge and post-metal in 2022.

The Burden is a harrowing and devastating album and THROWING BRICKS have firmly lined themselves up as potential future leaders in the post-metal world. To combine darkness with light this beautifully, this intricately, this powerfully, is a grand statement to the scene. It’s hard to think of another album that has done it quite so well since MØL‘s peerless Diorama. A grand statement indeed.

Rating: 9/10

The Burden is set for release on October 28th via Tartarus Records.

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