After 18 years, the Flemish metalband Amenra laid the Mass series to rest (for now) with their spacious yet luscious new album De Doorn (The Thorn).
Straight away, within the long build of “Ogentroost“, we see our first taste of the darkness to come. At this point, new vocalist Caro Tanghe, known for her work in Oathbreaker, makes immediate contributions to the foreboding mood, as foreshadowed by the rose thorns acting as barbed wire on the cover.
Heartbeat
Beating drums
Called upon
It has been done
Though translated here, the album appears entirely in their native Flemish, the vocals jump from a wail to a scream to a whisper, backed the whole way by twisting guitar leads headed for the nearest storm cloud. Not a moment is wasted across the five tracks spanning the album, with the dynamics extreme. From near-silence to viscous assault, the solemn mood bends and ascends, while never losing its doom-metal roots.
After a lengthy, spoken-word passage dominate “De Dood In Bleoi”, “De Evenmens” resounds to remind the listener exactly where we’re located. Eventually, the surroundings become clear: a dark Belgian wood, a small town at dusk, a gnarled cobble road. An invitation given to experience the specters of war, both individually and as a collective:
Chilled to the bones
I am a king of grief
Iron crown of thorns
Cut into my flesh
There is no relief
Markedly directing much attention to the thorn as the album’s title and central motif, it acts as a lodestone by which the rest of the imagery circles. Representing loss, memory, and revelation, among other themes, it serves as the anchor where the bones of the album are laid upon. Each track beckons like a caller in the night, drawing closer in various shades of immediacy but always driven by pure necessity.
The crows last flight
To flee its nest aflame
Sighing.
Mouths crying the river.
Broad and wide swallows
Sweeping all asunder
Finally, rest. Though just over forty-five minutes in length, the album certainly slouches towards Bethlehem, or otherwise Kortrijk in this instance. All the while, through the album’s tragedies and memories, one is left transfixed or spellbound, needing to be snapped out of it:
There is love
There is grace
But I avert my face
9/10