Orchid Throne – Buried In Black
Orchid Throne – Buried In Black
Self-Released
Release Date: 09/01/2026
Jon Deaux
8.7/10
Seventeen years in the trenches will harden you into a lifer, stuck with tinnitus and terrible musical taste, or it will instil in you something sublime, something warped, something lethal. “Buried In Black” most certainly falls into the latter camp.
“Buried In Black”, of course, refers to the latest offering from Orchid Throne, which isn’t so much guitarist/songwriter/slightly-naughty-boy Nicholas Bonsanto’s ‘solo project’ but rather ‘Nicholas Bonsanto closes the door, lights the candles, and lets the doom happen.’
But we’ll dispense with the obvious right off the bat: “one-man doom bands” are always a bad, bad thing, like a copy-and-paste notice from a LiveJournal with reverb applied to give it an air of coming from a recording studio—when in reality it comes from the basement of a high school student. Buried in Black has the sense of urgency in attempting to be taken seriously that a one-man doom metal band simply shouldn’t.
All of this bottled courtesy can be heard in the doom metal riffing of “Buried in Black”—it sounds like they’ve been waiting to explode for too long and now they’re choosing to go with a refined and musical approach.
‘Ephemerality’ and ‘Guilt’ don’t melodramatize sorrow; they inhabit it. It’s just doom metal music for people who have already wept and are now just hanging out, dealing with the aftermath, fixated on the ceiling, trying to figure out why time is so feisty, punching at the world with fists full of clocks. It’s just as bleak as it is, and still, it’s the last thing in the world they’re given to, emotionally speaking—leastways, no “tragedy poet in a cradle of corsets,” and more “confronting the presence of metaphysical terror and armed with the sturdy heels of one ready to explore the ruin of the world.”
On the musical part of things, Bonsanto gives off the confidence of recreating the giants – a sort of melancholic heft found in Swallow the Sun, the emotional part found in Anathema, the battered vulnerability found in Woods of Ypres, and all without crossing over into costume play. ‘Moonlight Revelry’ is almost like the slow-motion crash with the moonlight shining on your face and feeling both lovely and hopelessly depleted.
What truly sets “Buried In Black” apart, though, is its emotional maturity. This is no doom as aesthetic; it’s no doom as a release of anger and frustration in exchange for a righteous sound. It’s no doom at all—instead, it’s a personal statement. It’s a nod to Bonsanto’s large role in his musical career in the sense that it holds absolutely no ego in it. “
Buried in Black is saturated with sorrow, reflection, and the kind of late-night confessional introspection that is completely absorbed in self-awareness. It is dramatic but not sloppily so. It is open but not needy. It is a record that can easily color outside the lines of black, not as a comment but as a statement of fashion. Doom metal but with lotion.
This was heavy, this was emotional, this was fashionable. Orchid Throne was without a doubt the band that taught doom metal how to feel, rather than how to sound, without looking like a braggart in the process.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Dreamworld
02. Ephemerality
03. What Defines us
04. Moonlight Revelry
05. Guilt
06. Breath of Autumn
07. With Promise
LINKS:
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