Children of the grave
As someone who grew up in the West Midlands, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for stoner metal. It’s not because Black Sabbath are from Birmingham or anything like that, it’s just that, like many people who lived round there, I spent many summers of my life working nights in faceless, soul-crushing warehouses, and somehow, brutal hypnotic metal seemed to mirror the feeling of complete emptiness that comes from endlessly loading boxes of kids clothes onto the back of arctic lorries.
That’s probably the reason why I was properly blown away when I first listened to Throne. A three-piece from east London who make their metal slow, sludgy and heavy as fuck, they’re the sort of band you can stick on a pair of headphones and get a right head bang going to. While I could be all lazy and bandy about some Sabbath references, to their credit Throne are way more intentionally loud than Tony Iommi and Ozzy ever really envisioned. If anything their music is more like Kyuss with more straight-up ‘Master of Reality’-style writing style, if that’s even possible.
Whatever the intricacies of their sound; Throne are on a mission to resurrect experimental metal in all it’s pulsating in your face glory. Its going pretty good so far, only forming late last year, in the past nine months the band has already supported The Men at the Shacklewell, appeared at this years Desertfest at the Underworld (as well as pretty much every other metal show Camden has offer), played to a car park full of Americans at SXSW and freaked out indie kids the Great Escape. Due to play the Waiting Room next week, I thought it was probably best that I talked to the band before I pushed myself up against their bass amp.
How did Throne first come about?
Will: It sort of started with just me and Julia jamming together. After a while we started looking for another guitarist, but it ended up taking ages. Loads of people were like "yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m really into it" then not show up to any practices.
We got really lucky when we met Nicos, it just so happened that he was doing some really similar things, so we got him onboard. That’s it really.
Did you guys intend to start a stoner band?
Julia: Kind of; when we started jamming it was a lot more doomy, but it’s kind of developed into something that’s a lot more stoner rock.
Is the world ready for a stoner metal revival?
Julia: Isn’t it already happening? I mean Kyuss reformed a couple of years ago...
Will: I wouldn’t say it was due a revival, I would say that it’s always been there. Certainly a lot of bigger bands in stoner metal are still going. I mean ATP the other month had the Melvins and Sleep playing, it’s like it never really went away.
There hasn’t been a proper break-out stoner metal band for a while; you must have had people at shows going “what the hell is this”?
Nicos: I guess for some people it could feel like a whole new thing, but by and large most people have at least some idea of what our influences are, so they sort of know what to expect.
Julia: A few of my friends have been like "I’ve never heard this kind of stuff before". It’s been really fun to be the band that introduced them to this sort of music.
OK last question: for you guys to carry on existing, you have to destroy either Black Sabbath or Slayer. Which one would you choose, or would you decide to destroy yourself in a noble gesture?
Julia: Fuck that!
Will: Would we be the ones destroying them?
Yeah, if you want...
Will: Well, Sabbath would be easier to fight as they’re all really old, but I much prefer Sabbath, so it would have to be Slayer.
Ozzy would be super hard to kill.
Will: Yeah taking down Ozzy would be hard, those old British rock dudes are nigh on indestructible. There’s another reason why it would have to be Slayer.
Nicos: Plus Slayer would be way more fun to fight...
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Throne play the Waiting Rooms in Stoke Newington next Wednesday.
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