Digging into the black, sodden wilds to find hexes and dark enclaves of deep aura with Swedish blackened hardcore oath-keepers, This Gift is a Curse. Rising from the muck of mirthless quagmires and the heap of half-drowned and burnt cast-offs that suffuse and populate the modern world, TGC make hell a place on earth on their third LP,
A Throne of Ash. While the band stakes their turf on the well-trodden, viscera-coated bridge that arches between second-wave black metal and crusty hardcore, there is an added depth of desperate searching anguish to the proceedings that help TGC stand out from their petulant peers, claiming the high ground for themselves atop a twisted hoshi and monument to turbulent spiritual angst. One such aspect that defines the group's eldrich embodiment of animus energy is the frankly chilling occult aesthetic they’ve adopted for their album art and stage personas. Surrounded and adorn with hoods, twisted crowns, and devilish-looking farm equipment, they present as a secret society to themselves- one in possession of knowledge that was better off buried or lost to time. I'm not one to doubt the depths of the void they slithered out of; their music is proof enough of their ascent from the pit of raw arcane rupture. The chaotic "Wolvking" is haunted by some of the more esoteric and bone-chilling sounds the band has to offer, while "Wormwood Star" seethes with dark radiance in a rippling pool of black oily rhythms, and the daring death-wish “In Your Black Halo” is pure, unspoiled noise-core. More straightforward hardcore can be found on the Converge-indebted “Gate Dweller” and the power-violence imbued "Thresholds," where you truly get the sense of something ancient and foul invading the plain of Euclidian reason. Plunge into the crimson pyre and arise a regent on A
Throne of Ash, awaiting a new dark dawn when you may relinquish your crown to an even more formidable terror.
