RHINO – Dead Throne Monarch

Here is one important fact for you, total obscurity doesn’t cover lack of sense to one’s music. When Rhino, which is an example and moniker for bands like Crowbar, High Of Fire, early Danzig, Down, Superjoint Ritual and the slightest shard of Alice In Chains from the Dirt era, recorded their new album, they continued with their current style,which is Stoner / Doom Metal with some speed, they forgot one thing – to make interesting music. It’s known that all the aforementioned bands were influenced by the works of early Black Sabbath and Motorhead, but you didn’t hear any complaints about material like Paranoid, Master Of Reality, On Parole and Iron Fist. This Spanish group has got the right elements to make good Doom Metal, sometimes there are even Sludge grooves in their music, but they’ve gone off making songs that are too long,which tends to make the listener fetch a pillow and call it a day. Hell mates, why so soon? We got things to do.

Not every album is a definite hit, but when you arrange the songs, do the recordings, most of one’s purpose is to captivate the listener. Dead Throne Monarch has some better, even great moments in it, but you have to pick them out one by one and add them to a sort of collection that you won’t forget.

Songs like “Earth Reclaims The Usurper” can be obscure as hell but all the 9.16 mintues are useless. In the first minutes you have that same darn old rhythm and vocals that sounds like a growling dog. It’s correct that this type of music can be slow and dirty but you don’t have to make it boring. Here is a question for you, what gives? You can shorten this section into one verse and go on through to the next part and the song will turn out to be no more than 5 mintues. Moreover, where did the singing go? If you remember some Down albums, Phil Anselmo actually sings something that every John Doe can understand. As mentioned earlier, the music is not energetic as this type of music, but you don’t have to feel that dead altogether. The examples continue while looking through songs like “Funebre”, where you can hear great vocals, like Alice In Chains, but why the length and the same in “Horned Crown”.

With all these letdowns there are some sparks which you can take interest in with songs like “Bahamut”, that with all of its length, sounds like a new spawned Black Sabbath tune with various interesting doomy tunes and riffs. Even the singer and the mastermind of the band, Javier Galvez, sounds like a human again while spitting out the lyrics.

“Pales Horse Is Coming” sounds like taking Joe Cocker and dropping him in as the frontman for Down or Crowbar. Sounds funny to you, just listen to the vocals. Musically the song itself sounds okay and it finds refuge in past rhythms that work out great.

“Wolf Among The Sheep” is the most energetic song on the album, uses the doomy rhythm as a primary weapon but a much more violent attitude. However, there is a thing that ruins it. While the music is violent, the singer reverts back to his annoying barking, not all the time but in several areas.

“Wendigo” is a good acoustic song with a lot of feel. It sounds like a mix between Alice In Chains and Danzig. The solo presented is nice, slow and touchy. This track is the best in the album, not because it’s clear, but because it reflects something else regarding Galvez’s writing.

As far as production goes, it’s definitely what the band needed, a well done job to make a Doom / Stoner Metal album. To be more accurate the sound is too low, down, and depressive. All you have to do is to pick one definition and to go with it, they all fit. Sadly, with all that great production, the outcome, although obscure, didn’t turn out to be good.

For you Traditional Doomsters, this album can twitch you a bit or more. If you are a die hard fan of this sub-genre, you should try it out.