I had never heard SENZAR before and like any new album from a new band there are always expectations for the sound, the style and the melodies. Pyre of Throes is their first full-length album with eight tracks and a duration of a little over 44 minutes.

The first thing I will say is that this is a good work with elements of Death and Black metal. The album starts with "Alderbaran's Shine" and it is the song I liked the least. Not because it is a bad song but because it doesn't seem to be in the same style as the rest of the songs of "Pyre of Throes". It is a song that seems to anticipate a work that musically goes in another direction than the rest of the album. "Cosmogenesis", the second song, does work as a real welcome to "Pyre of Throes" and there I started to feel that I really could like the album. I thought, mostly because of Trevor McLave's vocals and the rhythm of the song in AT THE GATES. This may give you an idea of how much I enjoyed listening to it. "Unforgiven Twilight" begins with a rhythmic base that makes it impossible to stop moving your head. It is a song in which the musicians carry well and strongly a song that runs mostly in the canons of Melodic Death but also shows some passages of Black metal.

"The Sadness Will Last Forever" takes us from the first moment to the lands of Black metal. Paul Nash's guitar and Martin McElhinney's drums mark the rhythms and the melody typical of the Scandinavian Black metal of the mid 90's, although with some melodic touches. The fifth song called "Zenith" returns to a slower and oppressive atmosphere with touches of Death metal. "Elegy of The Fading Cello" is the song that follows and again imposes the best of SENZAR in a mixture of elements that make us feel all their strength. I really enjoyed the work of the guitarist and bassist Steven Anderson who have given more atmosphere to the song beyond the fact that it is difficult not to want to imitate McLave's vocals. As soon as "Elegy of The Fading Cello" ends we fall into "A Black Hole Devouring a Star" and the atmosphere only gets better, everything works perfectly and the Black metal touches did nothing but steal my soul. "Pyre of Throes" closes with "Of Embers", a song that may not be the best of the album but that serves as a very good synthesis of what SENZAR expressed in this work.

In short, Pyre of Throes has strength and, except for the first song, a coherence that makes it a very interesting album with some songs that are really very good.