Release Date: 23rd February 2024. Record Label: Self Released. Formats: CD/DD
Lightning Spawn - Tracklisting
1. Lightning Spawn
2. Ain’t the End of My Rope
3. Born as a Stranger
4. I Accuse You
5. Into the Eyes of Old
6. Foreboding
Review
Lightning Spawn is the new album from Thorndale captures a more modern flavour of Grooved Out Stoner Metal with a crunching collection of Doom Metal progressive passages. With a classical Heavy Metal sound which allows Thorndale to play some outstanding moments of Guitar Shredding with the band moving to a more familiar style of music whilst setting the scene with their own blend of harsh sounding grooves.
There’s moments of Pantera, Lamb Of God, Black Sabbath and Crowbar aggressive energy which Thorndale plays very early on within the album with opening tracks: Lightning Spawn and Ain’t The End Of My Rope. With an off-kilter NOLA based Sludgy element moving into more Prog Metal riff-wizardry which keeps a fine style of 1980’s Heavy Metal and modern day Psychedelic Doom/Stoner Metal sounds that lean into almost cinematic world-building moments which allows Thorndale to be quite more dominant with their HEAVY METAL creative side.
The vocals are primarily clean-based with a slight FANTASTICAL and OTT delivery to them which works superbly well on the more outlandish moments where the guitar solos go off script and becoming more outrageous on tracks such as Ain’t The End Of My Rope, Born As A Stranger, I Accuse You and Foreboding.
Lightning Spawn does have a Post-Apocalyptic flow which keeps the album quite well grounded despite the Post-Doom and Destructive nature of the album. Thorndale even switched to moments of 90’s sounding Grunge for the later stages of the album with the band touching upon Alice In Chains and Soundgarden for direct influences whilst keeping their Doom/Stoner/Groove Metal mentality. The album is superbly melodic with a multitude of different styles from Throndale for listeners to contend with.
This allows Lightning Spawn to be quite an action packed ride that will delight the whole contingent of the Heavy Metal and Hard Rock community with its limitless amount of different styles and ferocious catchy grooves that will leave you breathless at times.
This is a great album and quality sounding release for Thorndale to make themselves more well known within the global Heavy Rock/Metal scene.
Excellent and Highly Recommended.
Words by Steve Howe
Thanks to Grand Sounds Promotion for the promo.
Lightning Spawn will be available to buy on CD/DD om February 23rd 2024.
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