It’s a good time to be a fan of doom metal! With bands like Conan and Pallbearer lighting the way, many other bands have emerged to revel in the same downtempo madness. Blessed Black are yet another entrant in this packed field of bands, but they stand head and shoulders above the crowd. On Beyond the Crimson Throne, Blessed Black have crafted some truly excellent and high powered doom metal, thanks to a group of songs that rarely lose momentum and contain soaring—almost Mastodon-esque—vocals. This is a band with stunning technical abilities. The sheer wizardry that they bring to the foreground is fascinating and speaks to just how much hard work has gone into Beyond The Crimson Throne.
What Blessed Black really excel at is putting ideas reminiscent of Thin Lizzy, UFO, and Iron Maiden into a doom metal context. With a focus on high powered solos, bluesy licks and startlingly good [vocal? guitar?] harmonies, it’s hard not to be charmed. Fans of classic metal will find something to groove along too and doom freaks will embrace the depth of the tone. It’s fun to bop along to what Blessed Black have done here. Across the 7 tracks of Beyond The Crimson Throne, the band manages to impress by building on traditional genre tropes.
The riff-filled fun of the intro of "The Black Gate" shows what this band can do. Meanwhile, the track’s punishingly heavy verse proves that Blessed Black can down tune with the best of them. The band is perhaps most reminiscent of Khemmis with the way they seamlessly marry 70s hard rock with doom. There is simple, elegant poetry to the execution throughout the album and tight, angular playing abounds. The guitar tone used throughout is excellent and contributes to a clear ‘feel’ for the record. Rather than losing themselves in aimless walls of fuzz, Blessed Black focus on guitar harmonies and thudding bass passages. Suffice to say the production is, by and large, excellent. It lends a sense of confident professionalism to the recording that is unusual for a debut record.
That being said, some of the bridges have a tendency to drag. With songwriting chops this good, the band shouldn’t need to fill out the record with extended jams. This is how a track like "Heavy Is The Crown" stumbles, especially after its promising Thin Lizzy-esque kickoff. Unfortunately "Arioch’s Bargain" suffers a similar fate. Other tracks, like "The Shadows" have unwieldy, overlong intros that detract from an otherwise great song. And although the lively vocals are generally one of the strengths of the album, they are occasionally lacking in polish -something that could have been fixed with a few more takes in the studio.
In some ways, it’s like the first Spirit Adrift record where the potential is clearly there but the band could also be so much more. But that’s the thing – if the record is good enough to be compared to Spirit Adrift then clearly Blessed Black are onto something special! Considering that this is the first record from these Ohio rockers, Beyond The Crimson Throne should be viewed as a great achievement! Blessed Black may not be re-inventing the steel, but Beyond the Crimson Throne is a wonderfully promising debut.
Score: 8.5/10
