(written by Islander)
Thorns of Ruins makes its first appearance in ours page today. It is the solo work of Thomas Aamodt, who is probably better known for his other project, the Norwegian black metal band Ildfar.
We’re informed that the idea for Thorns of Ruins started back in 2022 when some of the songs that would become Ildfar’s second album, Nattemørkets kall, did not fit within Ildfar’s universe. Rather than abandon them, Thorns of Ruins was formed – and since then Aamodt has strived to create even greater musical separation between the two projects.
That separation is now most evident in Thorns of Ruins’ second album, Stellar Reverence, which will be released on August 13th by a trio of labels — Satanath Records, Black Plague Records, and Pagan Fury Records.
The new music still shows its connections to black metal, but it also reaches across genre lines to create intersections with doom and death metal, and to craft melancholic, atmospheric, and melodic experiences. We have an example of how multi-faceted the music is, through our premiere of a lyric video for the song “Wicked Souls“.
This new song is an elaborate piece of music which intertwines contrasting ingredients to create contrasting moods. It’s both elegant and savage, both distressed and defiant, both grand and aggrieved – and the vocal variations are also quite varied.
Thorns of Ruins quickly establishes the song’s principal melodic motif with a brightly dancing keyboard arpeggio that sounds something like a clavichord, a melody that’s spritely yet also ghostly. That motif surfaces and re-surfaces to tie together a sequence of subsequent changes.
Beneath those dancing keys, abrasive riffing provides a grim, and even dismal, backdrop, joined by thumping beats and clattering fills. That backdrop rises and then shines with symphonic majesty, seeming to wail, yet also connecting to the opening motif.
Convulsive guitars and strongly surging thrusts add to the song’s growing intensity, but reverberating piano keys soften the experience with a further variation (a sorrowful one) on the main melody. As the dancing keys return, the riffing blisters and sears in its anguish, and the grooves slug even harder, while keyboards continue interweaving variations in the core melody.
As mentioned above, the vocals are tremendously varied yet almost ceaselessly unnerving. They range from scarring screams to ragged howls, from diabolical proclamations to dour spoken words and wretched yells.
Stellar Reverence was recorded and mixed at DownFall studio, and it was mastered by Tom Kvålsvoll at Kvalsonic Lab. It will be released in a jewel-box CD edition with a 6-page booklet, and digitally. Find more info via the links below, and also listen to the album’s first single, “A Rusted Hanging Sun“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat426-thorns-of-ruins-stellar-reverence-2026
https://blackplaguestore.com/
https://www.barbaricfury.shop/
THORNS OF RUINS:
https://www.facebook.com/people/Thorns-of-ruins/61556266875321/
https://thornsofruins.bandcamp.com/