THORNESBREED is a Black Metal artist from Germany who released the album "GTRD" this year. The group has been around as long as 1997 but this is only their second full-length album release. Their album "The Splendour of the Repellent" came out in 2003 and other than a 5 track EP that came out seven years ago, we haven't heard of anything from THORNESBREED for a long time.

To understand the sound of THORNESBREED, you have to endure the Black Metal bitterness of THORNESBREED's record that comes from a very dreary and emotionless place. The music still finds itself sounding emotional but that is only when you correlate the atmosphere to something that is human. It's in my opinion that THRONESBREED wrote this music from a very inhuman place; somewhere that ninety-nine percent of musicians decide not to go. Like their song "Abendwerk", the themes of "GTRD" are animosity, primitive insight and the transcendence into the grotesque.

The core members of THORNESBREED are its vocalist Sermon and lead guitar player Stefan Mann, a.k.a. Faust. The rest of THORNESBREED's lineup are much more contemporary who have yet to publish any music with the band before. The soul of this album are driven by these people, drummer Conta Mination, bassist Nguar and the rhythm guitar player credited simple as E. The soul of THORNESBREED is what you hear on this album but the heart of this band lie within their founding, core members. And that is where the details come from. Altogether, they make up one hell of a fetid beast.

With all of its strengths, "GTRD" is still an album that I found very hard to get into, even as a hardcore Black Metal fan. But I feel like this weakness only applies to the appeal or accessibility of the music rather than the overall quality of its craftsmanship. The music is still quite raw and complicated to find yourself within. It actually does require some thinking and outside thinking to bend yourself into the shape necessary for "GTRD" to strike something within you. But it is entirely possible and THORNESBREED isn't necessarily an entirely fruitless endeavor.<