Band: SUREMAD
Country: Germany
Title: Thronfall
Label: Independent
Year: 2021
Style: Pagan Black Metal

Review:
Although you might get inclined (like I was, to be honest) to find the band name a bit funny and unfit for a Black Metal band, it actually doesn't mean they are "mad for sure", but it seems the terms comes from Estonian language and means either dead or dying, and that makes more sense already. The other thing that might get you off-course is the Metal Archives labelling of their music as Punk Pagan Black Metal, but at least on this debut album there are no traces of Punk, so Pagan Black Metal might be a more fit label of their music. Most of the time we're dealing with fast-paced furious Black Metal, but there are some passages of somehow Melancholic mid-tempo Pagan Metal where the music gets a real emotional turn, and where I think the band can invest more because a more in-depth blending of the two will lead them to discover their own direction and maybe their own identity. Even on this album there are a few tracks that will convince you of the band's serious potential, like the second and fourth tracks (Ascheregen and Das XII.Relikt) where they blend melancholy with aggression, a bit of groove, and plenty of raw emotions especially coming from the crying / screaming vocals. But this is not an old-school Pagan Black Metal, I'd say it's more modern that I would have expected, and only the (chaotic at times and definitely rougher and dirtier) production keeps it somewhere in between Modern and Old-school. Bottom-line we're dealing with an emotional, modern, yet raw kind of Pagan Black Metal that keeps growing in intensity along the 8 tracks it features, a very good debut from a band that will hopefully keep surprising us in a good way.
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 8.5/10

Contact:
suremad.bandcamp.com