BLR079

Metachthonia, the latest album from New Brunswick-based Thrawsunblat, finally gets vinyl treatment courtesy of New York label Broken Limbs Recordings.

Metachthonia is ancient Greek for "the age after that of the Earth," referring to today's modern world. The saturation of electricity and industry has created a time where we find ourselves under fluorescent light more often than sunlight, and so yearn for the natural world. The band captures that feeling of being relentlessly drawn to something that has been taken away. Like Thrawsunblat's previous record, Metachthonia is also a concept album, with longer songs weaving a single path through its environment in a linear structure. Metachthonia still flows with Thrawsunblat’s folk elements, but on a different, slightly darker canvas. It showcases the band's ability to allow subtleties to shine - where Wanderer... has fiddles, Metachthonia has cellos. In the group's own terms, Wanderer... was blackened folk metal, Metachthonia is folkened black metal.

Thrawsunblat is a "Raw Folk & Melodic Black Metal" band from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, fronted by Juno-winning Woods of Ypres' final guitarist, Joel Violette. The first album, Canada 2010, was released in late 2009 and featured Woods of Ypres frontman David Gold on drums. Following Gold's death in December 2011 as a result of an automobile accident, Woods of Ypres disbanded and Thrawsunblat became Violette's main project. He recruited Rae Amitay (Immortal Bird) and Brendan Hayter (Obsidian Tongue) on drums and bass for Thrawsunblat II: Wanderer On The Continent Of Saplings, which was engineered by Juno award winner Siegfried Meier. The same lineup recruited cellist Raphael Weinwroth-Browne (Musk Ox) and worked again with Meier for Thrawsunblat III: Metachthonia, scheduled for release in June 2016.

Metal Bandcamp on Metachthonia: "With Metachthonia they have created something near-impossible for the style: an album that’s equally ferocious, somber, void of pretense and utterly majestic."