A band seemingly as inescapable these days as the passage of time or rising food prices, thrown have nevertheless made a good attempt to justify their position in today’s streaming world. Found on every alt playlist known to mankind, the Swedish bruisers have found a way to, whether by hook or crook, reap the fruits of certain streaming platforms’ algorithms. They’ve also gained a pretty solid live reputation in their short time as a band and have managed to hold their own on stages with some of the biggest names in the game.
So whether you’ve heard the band just the once or are a fan, you know what awaits you on their debut, Excessive Guilt. 11 tracks of anger riddled, IQ lower than a Reform Party conference nu-metalcore. It’s the exact kind of music that tickles the parts of the brain associated with foraging for food or using stones to hunt mammoths and for that reason, it will always find an audience. They do mix things up with some electronic elements every now and then, but for the most part you end up with a band who shoots for a mix the fist swinging ignorance of Kublai Khan TX and the “I can fight the world” lyrics of The Ghost Inside, but misses on both fronts.
In it’s sub twenty minutes run time, there’s a good deal of bounce and moments that will make you go “oof” but sadly not much in the way of tracks that will leave an impact. There’s nothing wrong with short albums or sub two minute bangers, but there’s no real attempt here to try and make them stand out from one another or show some semblance of having more than two strings to their bow. The presence of bands out there like Mugshot and Starve who are making much more memorable aggro crowdkill-core that sticks, that relies on more than just some down-tuning to pack a punch also diminishes thrown‘s impact. Those bands also have hooks, moments that will stick with you after the fact. There’s very little in the way of actual songcraft. If you were to be cynical, you’d start to wonder if the guarantee of streams, of recognition has dulled the bands songwriting. There’s no impetus, no desire to stand above their peers and crucially for this type of music, no heart.
It’s a hard task to write about individual tracks because it all blends together in a beige blob of faux-angst and music that feels like it was created in a boardroom by failed musicians rather than a practice space. The hip hop influence that appears in ‘on the verge’ is worthy of a repeat listen but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done better before. It’s a shame because the production is actually decent and probably makes the band sound better than they actually are, which is a step above a battle of the bands local opener who got on there because they know the promoter.
There’s tracks that will undoubtedly end up finding their way into the gym playlist of somebody who finds bands like No Cure too heavy but sadly, for all of their hype and push, this ends up being a bit of a throw(n) away record. Kids in black hoodies will probably kill each other over these songs live, but people have been doing that for centuries over stupid reasons, this is just another for the list. A sad case of hype over substance and proof that streaming numbers have absolutely zero bearing on quality.