German Thron worked constantly to get a good reputation in the black metal scene and with their latest album "Dust" which was released in 2023 (read review here) they finally got the attention they truly deserve. This album was (at least for me) one of the black metal highlights last year and it’s still great to listen to when I give it a spin in my stereo. After having contact for a long time writing some messages with their guitarist PVIII, we finally met at "The Heretic March" to talk about the band. Enjoy reading and sorry for that massive delay in the release!

Michael

Hi, can you introduce Thron to our readers?

Sure. The band started in 2015 with me as guitarist. I have played guitar since 1989 and have always been in some rock, death or black metal bands since then. Around 2010 I was completely fed up with metal and was into some other music stuff. I also listen to prog and stuff like this. 2015 I was hot for metal again and I have a home studio where I also produced for some bands. So I recorded some riffs on my own and showed it to one of my best friends, the actual Thron vocalist, and he wanted to put some vocals on that. So we had these demos and I sent it around and all of a sudden we had a record deal with an Italian label, Clavis Secretorvm, and so we thought that we should form a band out of that. We asked some friends of ours for help and so we did our first gigs. This all wasn't intentional and spontaneous.

The last album was really a killer one. Did "Dust" help you to gain more popularity?

Yes, for sure. Though popularity is always a little bit of a difficult term because people imagine that you are present everywhere and you are everybody's darling. This isn't the case but we got quite a boost that some more people care about us, buy our albums and that we got more offers to play live. Not that we are getting daily or weekly gig requests but it got more.

…and you had a gig together with Carcass. How was that?

Great! Carcass is a band from my youth and I saw them back in 1994 the first time live with "Heartwork". The promoter who did the show did it just a half-an-hour drive from my home in Switzerland. It was at "Kiff" which is probably the coolest location in Switzerland and I know the guy for many years. So he told me that he is doing Carcass and that he would like to have us as support.

I know that you are working in a social service and so do some others in your band. Isn't it a contradiction to work in this profession on the one hand and to play black metal on the other?

Yes (laughs). I even work for the Catholic Church. It is a contradiction and it is one I can fully live with. I can separate both quite well. I think that I have a lot of characteristics that I have in music and in the band which I can also bring into my job. And there are also a lot of skills I need for my job I also can bring into the band. I can organize things well, I like structure and both at work and in the band it depends a lot on me. I don't have to pray at work and have no point of contact except that it is the employer. I work with fantastic people who also listen to metal or punk (laughs). Of course you can argue about the institution of Church – I am not a Christian but an Atheist – but I focus on my clients who need my help and so I don't give a shit who is the employer. My clients with whom I have worked with for 20 years need me and are dependent on me and I help them in their daily routine.

Do you have a certain black metal philosophy in the band?

No. The term black metal is…well, some say that it is black metal if it has a Satanic background so the terms are quite different when it comes to the meaning. I mean, we’re all Atheists in the band and the music has priority for us. Lyrics are important, too but our style isn't dependent from that. They shall convey certain feelings but we aren't Satanists or Occultists. We don't have neither a religious nor a political agenda, we just do what we are feeling without thinking too much about that.

And provoking isn't also that thing anymore, I guess. You had "Abysmal" cover which was a little bit ambiguous…

Well, actually I noticed it first after the reactions to this came. Then I thought "oh, yes!". The picture already existed and I was attracted by it. The colors and everything and so I thought that I'd like to have it as an album cover. After that I was told that this was a vagina… A lot of lyrics on the album dealt with that your body is the temple for you personally and this I actually associated with the cover and didn't intend any provocation with this.

Talking about the influences from the 90s that you have, we already talked about this before, they are much more to hear than on the previous albums – Sentenced, old Paradise Lost and all these bands. Do you think that you will continue quoting these influences in the future?

I still cannot say this. I have some thoughts on the new record and this means not that the album has to have a certain sound. But I collect ideas and out of this it develops a certain direction sometimes. The ideas I have at the moment tend toward the direction that it sounds a little bit more chaotic and not that accessible like in the past. But these are just some tendencies. I am not adverse to anything but I like it if you don't repeat yourself too much. We are at a point with album #4 where we can say that this or that sounds like Thron but I still want to challenge our sound and don't want to rest on what we do. As a musician there is always this thin red line between evolution because you don't want to repeat the same shit every day and on the other side there are the fans who get upset about that. I was always the guy with all my bands who said that I especially have to be at peace with myself. Fans are important but I do music especially for myself. The creative process of writing music is extremely important for me, sometimes even more important than playing gigs. This is great, too but to act out and having written a song at home just on my own is great, almost like having sex (laughs). I don't want to describe priorities there. If I get the idea to incorporate some jazz parts, some other guys in the band may say that I am weird and maybe I will consider what they're saying or maybe not. I don't want to be limited. Of course I know that I cannot write a hip hop record with the name Thron but at the same time I demand from the listener that he gets into this. If he thinks that isn't Thron anymore, I don't want to listen to them anymore, that's fine so just listen to our old records. We aren't dependent from this just like other bands who have to earn their money with their music. I had this in the past with one band that got the money from that. There it was always said that you can't do this or that and I don't want to get into this kind of situation.

So this means that you can comprehend the new Dust Bolt album, too?

Well, comprehend…I have heard two songs so far and I am honestly not a modern thrash fan. I prefer black thrash like Slaughter Messiah or brutal thrash like Dark Angel or Demolition Hammer. This typical Bay Area thrash I was never really into so when I read the news about Dust Bolt I thought that it is great what they are doing. I listened to the songs and it isn't really my cup of tea but I think it is great that they are doing what they are doing now. If people yell that they should rename themselves – what's the use of it? The band wants to do this and it was the same with my old band Fear My Thoughts. We did some melodic death albums and then our former singer quit. So we thought if we should search for another one who sounds similar to him or do we use the chance and do what we really want to do for several years now. So we picked out a highly melodic vocalist and did some prog-alternative rock like Porcupine Tree. The reviews were all great but our fans said that we should have done this under another name. We said that it is our name and we can do whatever we want with it (laughs). Or Carcass with "Swansong" for instance. They did it because they wanted to play this kind of music. Entombed with "Wolverine Blues" also! They all wanted to go further more and not do ten times the same record. This certain spirit I felt with "Dust". The 90s, especially the second half of them, were musically very difficult for me. I grew up with thrash and death metal in 90/91, also black metal in 93/94 and from that point on a lot of bands started to experiment. Death metal was dead, black metal was over its zenith and I personally found a lot of things some bands did really awful but some bands brought that what they did much more forth – Edge Of Sanity, Tiamat with "Wildhoney" which is a really very important record for me, Sentenced with "Amok" or "North From Here" – everything later became too gothic for me. Band that dared something, this was a thing I also wanted to do. Nowadays there are bands like Chapel Of Disease or Slaegt who try to discover something new.

Sounds good, I am excited about what will come out. Do you stay at Listenable for the next album?

Yes, we signed a new contract for several albums. They wanted to keep us on their roster and pushed us quite well. We got super support from them. I remember from my old bands that you got the studio paid back from the label in the early 2000s but now you maybe get some money but you have to pay most of the efforts on your own. Listenable still is a label which is very old school and pays the studio for you. I know contracts from other bands that have to pay money to get signed. And after that you have to pay the studio, press and everything else, too (laughs). We also got other offers but Listenable did the best offer.

Is there any schedule for the new album?

Probably the label will ask sometime because they are used to us doing an album every two years (laughs). But I must say that I want to take a little bit more time for that, also in my private life there are many things to deal with…usually I already have written new songs when the album is released. But not this time. As I said, I have some ideas and it is good to have this time span between release and writing new stuff now. But more I cannot say. Maybe we will record a new album in a year, or one and a half years but I don't want to determine anything right now.

Do you have any tour plans for this year?

Well, since we all have families with children, this is quite tricky. But our vocalist is going on tour with Swiss Malphas. They also play black metal but a little bit rougher in the Watain direction. They are a little bit younger and also play Party.San and want to be on the road. I want to play cool shows, but no rush! Maybe there will be a mini tour with The Spirit and one with Craft. Our drummer is pretty networked and so this might happen. But this would be all just weekend gigs. But we do some festivals like Summer Breeze, Hellfest and a festival in Vienna. It is fine for us to be on the road for two or three days but that's it.

Last question – what are you looking forward to most this year?

Well, playing Hellfest for the first time and Baden in Blut where we perform the second time will be cool. Summer Breeze we do also for the second time will also be great.