THRA
THRA “Forged In Chaotic Spew”
By Dr. Abner Mality
For fans of ugly, unwashed metal...and I’m one for sure...here’s another name to put in the “to watch” list. These cats come from the sun-blasted sands of Phoenix, AZ and play a raw, noisy style of death metal that has copious helpings of sludge and ambient noise tossed in.
THRA is coming from a place a bit murkier and more unrefined than trendy recent death metal such as the omnipresent SANGUISUGABOGG and UNDEATH. There’s lots of squealing feedback, tape hiss and distorted frequencies lurking here and the production is almost early 90’s demo quality, which actually fits the basic, elemental riffing of the band. Some superficial comparison can be made to INCANTATION and OBITUARY, but digging deeper, you’ll find more of a connection to sludge-death acts like BRAINOIL and CONAN (who THRA will actually be touring with soon in a nice example of synchronicity). These guys obviously love old school death metal but also favor super heavy sludge acts like THOU and PRIMITIVE MAN.
At some points, they just let primal noise and frequencies take over, as on “Vesuvian” and the two “Terror Vessel” tracks. But mainly, they just riff away like fiends on the evil likes of “Drag”, “Primordial Engorgement” and the obligatory epic “Blistering Eternity”.
It’s kind of tiring to repeat it, but there’s such a glut of death metal out there today, THRA is really going to have to struggle to raise their head above the muck. But if muck is what you like in your extreme metal, then these guys will make sure you drown in it.