2026 is still young. And, already, yet another metallistic one-man show makes its presence known over at the office tower. In the past, the RMR crew wasn’t all that thrilled about them, though. The typical stale odor of a do-it-yourself piece often wafted about the turntable when we played them. A record stitched together like one badly finished golem and then let loose. More often than not, da master also took mixing and mastering duties onto his or her to-do list. And this didn’t bode too well for the end product, either.
Now, over the last 2-3 years or so, the quality of such records actually improved, and in leaps and bounds. Real masters of the trade yearned to be seen, and not only jacks of all trades that somehow bubbled to the surface more by accident than by design. It will be in the eyes of the beholder, of course, if or if not the RMR crew just finally pushed the right buttons when looking for them. But I digress.
So, here, Lör refugee Nicholas Bonsanto appeared on our roster with his solo outfit, Orchid Throne, and their debut album, Buried in Black. And right from the beginning, you’ll find a record brimming with ideas, good and bad, stuffed helter-skelter into a very long 54 minutes of airtime. Actually, the artist succinctly stated that – and I quote “…the title describes both the music itself and the feelings that Bonsanto has kept buried within for [16] years. It may sound bleak, but what is buried in black will be set free and brought to light.” There you go, that’s exactly the impression we got upon the first listen of the piece.
Orchid Throne states Doom Metal to be the driving force behind the record. Yet, the piece sails closer to early Dawnwalker than it probably intended.1 In other words, Buried in Black presents itself as an Alternative Metal piece stuffed full of different genres. Woods of Ypres or – again – Swallow The Sun may have added their influences as well. Gothic melancholy indeed oozes out of the cracks of the record at any given time. Whereas, strangely enough, proper doom is arguably a rarer commodity on this here album.
The most astonishing aspect of Buried in Black is definitely the frequent descent from stretches of comparatively melodic and pretty progressive elements straight into Death and Black Metal. Moonlight Revelry, easily the filet piece of the album, may be a good example for this. Folky beginnings are relentlessly pushed through the progression spinning loop, ending in harshest metal. This one track also contains one of the best solos of the record. It indeed appears that Bonsanto is a man of many musical talents with a pretty manic urge to experiment.
And that can be a blessing or a curse. Circling back to the promo sheet once again, the author states that he – and I quote – “…collected little recordings of ideas in the hope that one day they’d be useful.” This is a fine strategy, of course. But a long list of ideas needs careful culling, lest you overload the production. And that is what happened here. And this lack of self-editing is not only evident in this aspect. Buried in Black is in dire need of the terrible carving knife.
There’s so much fat in there, one would think one of those infamous American food producers stuffed this thing like one of the proverbial hormone-contaminated turkeys. To give just one example, why on earth does Dreamworld need to be plagued by the same lick for some endless three minutes at the beginning? Meaning, many of the longer tracks on this record could easily have lost 2-3 minutes. And that would have increased crispness and reduced some of the mushiness.
Then, the lack of depth, the strange choices made with the mix, such as the vocals sitting somewhere back there with the drums, made us scratch our heads. If the aim was to create ‘atmosphere’, this crew didn’t quite get the message. The somewhat abrupt and rusty changes from one theme to the other, and the omission to use proper breakdowns from one style to the other gave the record that bizarre, disjointed garage flavor. A record mixed and mastered with DIY equipment, endowed with limited reach. And this may have been intentional after all. But it did not necessarily add this very important quality component.
Ultimately, though, Buried in Black ended on our good side. Bonsanto showcased a ton of good-to-great ideas after all. This, combined with the aforementioned experimental urges, led to some astonishing tidbits here and there. And this ended in a record with a usually well-paced tracklist and a somewhat subdued bite.
And, I reckon, it is yet again the good ol’ urge to perform everything by thyself that led to the shortcomings here. It takes a ton of skill to be a lone and successful warrior in music production. And on this record, we detected all of the aforementioned issues with songwriting, arrangement, mixing, and mastering that we often encountered before. Yet, the talent we can see clearly. And whilst it may be a stony pathway to improve quality levels, Orchid Throne will surely get there.
We’ll be in the props, waiting.
Record Rating: 6/10 | Label: Self-Released | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 9 January 2026
- It is always dangerous to quote that band. It ain’t the In Between thing, that’s a totally different animal. But try The Unknowing, for instance.-↩