Straddling the line between extreme homebrewed experimentation and caustic minimal industrial metal tradition this fourth full-length album from Tallinn, Estonia-based industrial death metal project THUNRAZ reaches for increasingly organic sounds and performance in conveying the cold eminence of futurity as a milling away of humanity. Presented in concise and economically depicted blocks of dissociative personae and wrathful death ‘Incineration Day‘ leads the listener through the pathos available to an increasingly anthropo-scenic point of view, slowing to a march into fatal irreverence by the end. What this album lacks in exaggerative production values and hifalutin production values it makes up for via an inventive self-carved niche and a unique enough take on dry death-industrial muse.

Thunraz formed by way of musician Madis Jalakas circa 2017 as self-expression became necessity per some manner of personal strife and, sure, you shouldn’t need a source on that suggestion for the sake of the consistently bleak, catharsis-seeking maul of his first EP (‘Bloodstone‘, 2018) where we first experience the cold hammer of industrial, sludge, and death metal coalescing in hand. Most any industrial metal project that deletes rather than adds, edits itself into minimalism, is likely inspired by Justin Broderick‘s early work under Godflesh (re: ‘Pure‘) and very related/underrated Scorn‘s ‘Vae Solis‘ as impetus for simple mechanical craft which finds natural placement of the death metal riff within late-late 80’s industrial rigidity. Knowing those references might effectively transmit to the average listener the starting point which’d lead to the rushed, sludged, and roaring debut LP ‘Hinterland‘ (2021) but we also find some interest in technical death metal and more organic, sonically challenging bands a la Bølzer brewing up on more involved compositions (see: “Ouroboros”) even at that still nascent level of conception. There was frankly nothing special about this approach as we begin to consider the last twenty five years of “bedroom” industrial/groove metal available to the archives of the internet… but it was clear that the habit of creation had caught on, likely during the pandemic years, and the result has been a bout of creativity that’d begin to reward its do-it-yourself/self-directed vision today.

Discordant, off-tune ringing riffs, some experiments with clean vocals, and steadily improving skill with programming drums made for two modest sub-half hour Thunraz albums being released in 2023 and I think it was pretty clear that the late-year release of ‘Borderline‘ (2023) was the more interesting of the two but, of course that’ll be subjective upon learning that ‘Revelation‘ (2023) was recorded as improvisation upon drum patterns created by Jared Moran (Acausal Intrusion, Filtheater, et al.). The latter of those two records contains direct precedence for the types of tones, songcraft, and temperament of ‘Incineration Day‘ but I’ll suggest up front that the songwriting on prior releases will be almost too obviously lacking compared to this new material, especially if your first impression to the band was the bunk Korn riff and scree that kicks off “You and Me” on ‘Borderline‘. The main draw here is an overall sense of improvement alongside the emergence of even more personalized, distinct craft.

The argument to make for ‘Incineration Day‘ after several rougher iterations upon this idea, all of which were served within a short period of time, is that we can now consider Thunraz readied-up with a release which is more profound and certainly better realized than anything prior. While I wouldn’t argue against “album readiness” and the quality of expression found on ‘Hinterland‘ and such but rather that this one resembles a niche product, something worth putting a price tag on. A substantial part of this observation comes from the quality of Jalakas‘ guitar work which has improved quite a bit beyond 2023’s over-active release schedule and is amplified by the inclusion of Kansas City-based drummer Sean Rehmer (Dejecter, Grevlar) who helps bring an organic swat to mecha-rhythmic movement. The resulting sound is of course still just as related to the idea of industrial and sludge inspired death metal as before but now creates the illusion of a full band’s thunder more successfully. Perhaps an even bigger note to take here is improvements made per Jalakas‘ cleaner vocal work and its melodic sensibilities, now reaching for something like ‘Lunasphere‘-era Adam Agius while the garage-scorched noise of the guitar work has a satisfying cacophonic quality which I’d likened to ‘Strap it On‘-era Helmet‘s (or, Coalesce even) overall effect when previewing “Compactor” earlier this month.

While “Compactor” is a good start in terms of gauging the kinetic value and niche-specific sounds to be found on ‘Incineration Day‘ the whole of the experience starts out suggesting plenty of refreshingly jagged, brutal death metal (“Tyrant”) is on the way and by the second half of its ~28 minute runtime we’ve taken their deepest step yet into the industrial sludge-attuned Godflesh-isms (“Eastern Promises”, “Spiritual Self-Surgery”) one’d expect of anything related to death/industrial metal beyond the mid-90’s (see: early Crawl, Inner Thought, Landfill.) I’m not sure if the average ‘old school’ death metal fan today would appreciate the bark and spasmic rhythms on offer here, and the clean vocals aren’t particularly notable yet, but the way these elements work together should catch the ear of anyone who’d heard similar possibilities in similarly inspired (non-nu metal/groove metal) stuff, a la the demo that’d preceded ‘Soul of a New Machine‘.

At under a half hour and with a fair bit of crossover between loosened death metal neck-snapping grooves and slower industrial metal-steamed dirges (with a tuneful edge applied) the full listen of ‘Incineration Day‘ has a couple of obvious standout moments depending on your taste, “Fragile Automata” being the best mix of key elements. That said none of it hits all that deep in terms of immersive value beyond the raw, coldly atmospheric roughness when the whole machine is moving in unison. In the moment their organic and ringing-raw guitar tones create a sense of feral, caustic space and the layering involved in the slower pieces creates the sensation of many moving parts as a sort of irregularly sped conveyor belt with an array of tortures available to the ride along. It won’t ultimately stick in mind but the body of noise created is yet entertaining song-over-song. In fact I could’ve done with another song or two in general to help round out the experiential value of the full listen. Either way ‘Incineration Day‘ is efficient enough in conveying what Thunraz are all about while generating some notable variation on what they’ve been developing over the last handful of years, just now finding some kind of breakthrough here in terms of song types and their voice within the general sub-genre admixture. A moderately high recommendation.

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