Grinding away at the apparatus with the corrosive spittle and blunt-edged teeth of the domesticate unleashed Phoenix, Arizona-based sludge/death metal quartet Thra finally crack into the jelly within the skull, reaping the first spoils of experience gained over the course of seven years as they continue to define their strangely moshable form on this debut full-length album. A tangled body with a foot on either side of the portal ‘Forged in Chaotic Spew‘ makes some notable sense of modern sludge sound design and harsh atmospherics with a moderate dose of nowadays chunking-and-kicking death metal. With plenty of interstitially set drone/dark ambient pieces to glue, tape and cement their first big act into place deathly air serves to fill in the cracks of somewhat modest, or, measured composition on this uncomplicated melee of a debut album. While the result is at times rigid and belabored the patient hybrid specific sub-genre fandom keen to these worlds will find a trove of miserable yet inventive pieces to pick through and anatomize herein.

Thra formed circa 2016 between vocalist/guitarist Rob Wolfe and vocalist/bassist Zach Nixon-Sandberg who’d soon flesh the lineup into a quartet before getting to work on a demo CD-r (‘Mourn‘, 2017) soon after. It’d been arguably the most squarely sludge metal focused material they’d put out and seemed to be a preliminary start with a different drummer who’d been replaced by the next year. By 2018 the quartet formed into a more solidified state, a lineup which persists today, and their sound began leaning into a rhythmic grey area between low n’ filthy sludge metal bruised up by somewhat hardcorish, fairly straightforward death metal riffs. That’d been the takeaway a couple of years later when their debut EP (‘Gardens of Rot‘, 2019) released and it’d glanced my inbox by way of the long dormant Camo Pants Records. When I’d given review of it the record had been death metal-related enough to have caught my interest but there hadn’t been anything that’d pushed their gig over the top. It’d been a promising first strike and at this point I’d say the same of this LP.

‘Sludge’ has been a general curse-word in terms of marketing for the last four years, so, it makes sense that these pieces essentially present Thra grow out of venturing anywhere but the original root of their sound but thankfully the tumbling aura of the drumming, the drenched-over guitar sound and heavy bass guitar presence allows their gig to evolve in the way that Tithe sorta have over the years, leaning into extreme metal influences; While the dissonantly chunked-at riffing of “Fracture” (and “Drag” for that matter) eventually leans into the hardcore/death metal meatiness one would expect from a nowadays death/sludge group it is probably “Cosmic Surge” where we find a full-on umpteenth generation ‘old school’ inspired piece on the album, grinding at its very simple and meandering main riff thread. That melting-together of a couple of very distinct palettes is the major draw for Thra‘s sound on my end but I don’t think it’ll be a complete thrill for folks who only specialize their taste towards death metal.

Thra never reach a point of stylistic stasis on the full listen, there is no pocket in their sound to enjoy but rather a desperate scrimmage to find an impactful place to land. While giving ‘Forged in Chaotic Spew‘ the several spins it were due it’d occurred to me that this was an album built by the best pieces they were saving for the full album moment rather than a set of pieces written in a row. Of course I could be mistaken but it would explain the consistent polish applied to pieces which reach a certain standard of interest but haven’t yet found a tuneful or angular voice, embracing no tangibly continuous thought between the lot. The use of interludes to tie it all together does however provide some semblance of intentional flow; Of the full ~38 minute record roughly six minutes amount to interludes, harsh bits of noise and atmospheric bolster which does well to build the aggravation and furor of the record into a different headspace than expected but likewise only acts as a somewhat dry container for otherwise entertaining pieces.

With all of this in mind “Blistering Eternity” is where Thra are unquestionably thriving within their newly grown skin as they marry the modern sludge abstraction of their realm, the whirring noise and mammoth tones of it all, with a doomed-death metal pace not that far from certain Dragged Into Sunlight or Ilsa-level territory where many of those grooves cross unexpected lines drawn by extreme metal adjacency. If there is a destination that speaks to what the entity is becoming, or, are taking stock of within this record that’d be the piece that stands out as the brightest helipad with “Primordial Engorgement” not too far astray from that same conversation. Though I couldn’t fully connect with this record in terms of its per-song statement its overarching frustration was easy enough to pick up on even if the record isn’t as one-dimensional as it might appear. Throw in a big, booming master from the maestros at Audiosiege with artwork from Form Terror Growth the whole deal has a certain sheen to it as an above-average curation of a still somewhat formative band. I’d ultimately choose to view ‘Forged in Chaotic Spew‘ as a righteous enough first chapter from the group, a reading of lessons learned and style forged into a comfortable place which only just begins to peck away at a point of view beyond the usual combinations. A moderately high recommendation.

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