HECATE ENTHRONED – The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried

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6.0

• Bands:
  HECATE ENTHRONED
• Duration: 00:53:53
• Available from: 05/29/2026
• Label:

• M-Theory

Despite a career that has now spanned more than thirty years (the band's foundation dates back to 1995), the English Hecate Enthroned, despite being blessed with a fair amount of initial hype, have never managed to emancipate themselves from the status of 'supporters' that has accompanied them up until now, nor to emerge completely from the shadow of Cradle Of Filth, despite a style that has gradually become more and more distant from the gothic black metal trademark of Dani and his associates (and despite their departure from the band, which occurred after the release of the second full-length, by singer Jon Kennedy, the only real point of contact between the two entities, having recorded the bass on the original version of “Dusk…And Her Embrace”); a situation which, it is worth clarifying immediately, can hardly be changed by this new “The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried”, on the launch pad for publication seven years after the previous “Embrace Of The Godless Aeon”.

In fact, this album – the second with singer Joe Stamps behind the microphone – is burdened by the same ballast that has always prevented the Albionic band from really taking flight in the Olympus of global black metal: that sense of approximation and lack of incisiveness that makes everything very 'average'.
Formally, there is nothing wrong with Hecate Enthroned's music: the songs are sufficiently flowing, well played and well produced; there are also some truly compelling moments, in which you have the clear feeling that our team, if they wanted, would have all the means to do really well.
Yet, when their records end, what is left is very little. The band's symphonic black/death metal (now established as a hypothetical trait d'union between the very first Cradle Of Filth and the Dimmu Borgir of the 'Nuclear Blast' era, with a sprinkle of 'rural' epic black à la Saor to close the circle), as well as its songwriting, has the damned tendency to sound generic, devoid of real depth and incapable of producing truly memorable songs, net of an experience that allows it to never slip below of a certain quality standard.

As regards the current course of Ours, and in particular of this new album, the best things emerge when Hecate Enthroned let their most epic and melancholy side emerge, as seen in the successful “The Arcane Golem”, “Deathless In The Dryad Glade” and “The Boreal Monastery”, while the moments closest to the classic gothic black metal – bordering on plagiarism towards the instrumental 'you know who' “Pwca” -, as well as those in which the more ferociously black/death nature takes over, as happens in the opener “Spirits Stir Within Our Ancestors Tombs”, but also in “A Gallery Of Rotting Portraits” or in the final “Into A Vale Of Endless Snow” make the band sink back into that limbo of mediocrity from which it seems truly unable to escape.
Of course, our band have a lot of skills, and the most avid fans of the classic symphonic black/death clearly inspired by the Nineties will undoubtedly be able to find something to amuse themselves in, in the fifty minutes that make up this “The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried” (also excellently produced by the good Dan Abela, already heard at work with Akercocke and Anaal Nathrakh), while listeners looking for works in which personality and incisiveness are the key masters would do better to head towards other, more satisfying, shores. Once again, enough and nothing more.