Back during 2020, a mini-album released that challenged my active dislike for all things power metal. The album was of such brevity, quality, and genre adventurousness that it broke down my cranky disposition on music that sounds too happy. This album was Edge of Eternity by the US-based progressive power/folk metal band Lör. By extension, this is why Nicholas Bonsanto‘s solo project Orchid Throne caught my eyes and ears when it landed in our promo bin, as he’s also the bassist in Lör on that album. I’ve been aware of Bonsanto‘s various other band ventures in the periphery, but this debut solo album is the first one that has landed closer to this Gator’s sphere of interest. Hitting play on “Dreamworld”, chilled, gothic sounding piano chords start off Buried in Black with a sizable doom metal track, that turns harsh on the drop of a hat. Orchid Throne hews close to the Finnish sound of melodic doom metal and melodic death metal that defines the work of Swallow the Sun (beautiful clean sections to foreboding doom), Insomnium (weeping guitar leads) and early Amorphis (folk-tinged riffs). I also know that Bonsanto is a fan of a lot of modern progressive metal bands, and while this influence is less pronounced on Buried in Black, it pops up here and there (acoustic transitions is reminiscent of Opeth, for instance). This is a somewhat crowded genre where writing and the depth of emotion on display really matter, and Bonsanto lands this latter part because of how personal Buried in Black is. This makes songs like “Ephemerality”, “What Defines Us”, and “Guilt” hit particularly well. Bonsanto‘s vocal performance sits somewhere between Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun) and Tomi Joutsen (Amorphis), with his dynamic use of harsh and clean vocals helping the impact of song transitions, only faltering a bit in his higher notes. I don’t think Bonsanto is a bad singer, but I feel like he isn’t always handling the transition from chest voice to head voice with as much sustained power as he needs.
When it comes to overall style, I’m liking what Orchid Throne brings to the table. The harsh/calm dynamic is handled very well for a debut that is made almost entirely by a single person. It sounds like a full band, and that requires a lot of skill to pull off, especially as Bonsanto has handled mixing and production on his own as well. With such personal works of art, it’s hard as a critic to say what should and shouldn’t do when creating it. But for projects that have sporadically been in the works for a long time, it’s often better to just release them so you can focus on what’s next. I mention this because while I feel that Buried in Black is good, I also think it has two distinct issues. Doom songs often need room to develop and this leads to extended track lengths. It’s not about a set number of minutes, but rather if an album does the most of its runtime, and as an album, Buried in Black stumbles a bit in being book-ended by two tracks hovering around the 13-minute mark. “Dreamworld” and “With Promise” both have well written parts that I like, but I can’t escape the feeling that the songs don’t flow as well as they should across the entire song. This feeling manifests itself in that I’m always having more fun with the songs in between. The other issue is one of individuality. I mentioned before that Bonsanto does well by having a personal touch in theme and the emotion across the album, but he manages this less so with how closely to genre tropes he often gets with his writing. In this, the longer tracks excel instead, and if Bonsanto was to continue the Orchid Throne project, I would like to hear a better marriage between the music’s writing and thematic feeling. That said, Buried in Black is a good debut for a one-man band, a good complement to the icy winter winds that sweep January, that I think a lot of melodic doom metal fans will enjoy spinning this year.
