Thugnor "Scrolls Of Grimace" CD

Brand new album with an hour of atmospheric doom of the highest order. Features JA of Decayed.

This is a strange one. Thugnor is a project of the venerable Jose Afonso, who is a big deal in the Portuguese scene, having played in Decayed for the last 30 years, as well as in other bands like Hoth, Alastor, and Death Feast. This apparently started as a more atmospheric project, but by the time this debut was released it had morphed into an interesting hybrid of Black/Death and Omen-styled Trad Metal. Afonso has always had a great ear for riffs, and that's part of what has made his work great over the decades, and that is the strength here. The guitar tone is a very heavy, bitter one that sounds like something akin to Celtic Frost or Hellhammer, and the vocals are a pure rasp of underground hatred, but the riffs and leads are more melodic than the usual, sounding much more like stripped-down Heavy Metal. It makes for a very interesting sound that recalls stuff like Faustcoven, or like Kryptos if Kryptos played at a crunching, slow march. There's not a whole lot of variation between these songs, and by the end it seems obvious that the album could have been shorter, but I still like it.

Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=Rv8pU63vw7A&t=1853s