Album Review: Furnace – Eternally Enthroned
Band: Furnace
Title: Eternally Enthroned
Label: Obelisk Polaris Productions
Release date: May 30th, 2025
Country: Sweden
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording
Album Review: Furnace – Eternally Enthroned via Obelisk Polaris Productions by Sílvia
Furnace is a Swedish Death Metal band featuring Rogga Johansson… yeah, another one in the endless list of bands, projects and whatever by this super prolific musician. Honestly, this man’s creativity has no limits, and I’ve only checked a very small part of his discography. Because I need to eat, work and sleep too, and there are a lot of other musicians and bands out there deserving my attention… and here I am again, complaining about days having only 24 hours!
But not everything is Rogga’s work, of course. He plays guitar and does vocals, and he’s the songwriter too. And the other musicians in this album are Peter Svensson, who plays bass, writes the lyrics and does backing vocals; and Lars Demoké, playing drums. It turns out that Svensson is another busy musician, as he is in many bands too, besides running Obelisk Polaris Productions, a Swedish record label. And about Lars, the only thing I know is that he plays drums in Catacomb, another Swedish Death Metal band with the same lineup as Furnace.
But let’s dive into the music…
I like how guitars play in a very melodic way, this is something familiar with the albums I’ve listened to involving Rogga Johansson, and I really love it, ‘cause when I want a more brutal and aggressive type of Death Metal I have tons of other bands to check. “Eternally Enthroned” has plenty of memorable catchy and melodic lines, in contrast with Rogga’s monstrous voice. The lead guitar is constantly infesting my brain with its brilliant playing. The overall sound is vibrant, deep, with the bass highlighting the guitars’ work and also shining by itself at some points.
Drums sound super powerful at times, not playing the “typical Death Metal drum patterns” but providing the songs with a more dynamic sound, even galloping, and other times the percussion slows down and marks a more restrained tempo.
Another enjoyable aspect in this album (and I’m not ashamed to use the word “enjoyable” to talk about a Death Metal release) are the choirs (Magnus Hultman here), and the spoken verse in “Thornblade” by David Ingram, who is in my opinion a very appropriate person to do that. It’s a solemn verse, with that synth in the background, it sounds profound and dramatic.
If you take an accurate reading of the lyrics, you’ll find yourself diving into a story of a tyrant and power-hungry king willing to do anything to remain eternally on his throne, and a brave man who must provide this to the bloodthirsty dictator. He risks his life and sanity to finally get his freedom. This is a very good story with plenty of epic topics.
And if all this is not enough for you, the artwork of “Eternally Enthroned” is done by the Colombian artist Julián Felipe Mora (AKA Julian Mortuus), he’s made artworks for bands such as Witchtrap, Echelon, Consumption, Wombbath, among many others; and he is also a tattoo artist.
The music in this album distills shiny (and even epic) moments, like in “Crow Warriors”: the choirs in this verse: “Regicide – reclaim our land / He must die by our hand / Liberty – our final cry / We’ll watch the tyrant die”, makes me rise my fist in the air claiming triumphant. Even if Rogga growls like a beast; even if lyrics talk about murder, horrors, torture and bloodshed… there’s an awesome vibration in the music and I love it. 9/10
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9/10 Epic Storm
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