ENTHRONED ‘Pentagrammaton’ (Regain) Review by Jeff Maki

There’s something about a release from Sweden’s Regain Records. You always know you’ll get a blasphemous, corpse-painted extreme black or death metal band that sounds like nothing familiar in the United States. Dark Funeral, Gorgoroth, Dismember and Marduk are perfect examples. So why would there be any reason to think the long-standing Enthroned’s 2010 album, Pentagrammaton, would be any different?

The Belgian black metal band has an image comparable to Immortal, Gorgoroth or Emperor—their corpse paint looks as evil and raw as they sound. Pentagrammaton (is that similar to the Necronomicon?) is 10 tracks of glorified black metal mayhem, similar in sound to the aforementioned bands, mainly Marduk or Gorgoroth. After several lineup shifts, the band is now Nornagest (prayers/vocals), Neraath (guitar/vocals) Phorgath (bass/vocals) and Garghuf (drums), comprising some of the hardest monikers to pronounce in black metal.

Pentagrammaton is like a black metal blast from the past, an album that equally pays homage to the subgenre’s early beginnings, yet is exciting enough for today’s extreme metal. It’s of course an embattlement of blastbeats, tortured vocals—not necessarily the high-pitched wails we’re accustomed to— and walls of scaling guitars. Enthroned doesn’t at all come across as a gimmick or experimental black metal. Like the bulk of Regain releases, there’s an authenticity and seriousness to this band and it runs through the band members' veins and lyrics, all the way to their horrific makeup. Enthroned’s extreme style doesn’t allow much breathing room, yet there’s enough variety that the content allows for actual songs, unlike many extreme bands today. “Rion Riorrim,” the six-minute title track and “Nehas’t” display a determined and vicious black metal band in top flight, playing songs from far dimensions of the netherworld.

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