To engage with the canon of doom metal is to enter a contract with gravity. It is a genre that does not merely exist within the spectrum of heavy music; it functions as its emotional anchor, a sonic manifestation of the burdens—physical, spiritual, and existential—that define the human condition. Unlike the frenetic aggression of thrash or the technical exhibitionism of death metal, doom requires a patience that borders on the ascetic. It asks the listener to sit with discomfort, to allow the slow decay of a guitar note to mirror the slow decay of life itself.

For decades, this musical style has been dominated by the “Peaceville Three”—Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema—bands that codified the language of sorrow in the early 1990s. They established a lexicon where violins wept alongside distorted guitars, and where romantic tragedy was elevated to high art. However, as the genre moved into the twentieth-first century, a new vanguard emerged, one that looked less to the gothic romance of the past and more to the crushing inevitability of the natural world.

Bands like Ahab turned the ocean into a monster; Shape of Despair turned the funeral procession into a drone. It is within this rich, historic tapestry that Sun of the Dying emerged, a band that has spent the last decade carefully studying these masters while carving out their own distinct niche in the sun-scorched lands of Madrid.

The Trajectory of Sun of the Dying

Sun of the Dying’s journey has been one of careful, deliberate evolution, a slow march from the periphery of the Spanish underground to the forefront of the international doom scene. Their debut, ‘The Roar of the Furious Sea’ (2017), was a work of promise, a maritime obsession that paid homage to Ahab but perhaps leaned too heavily on its influences. It was a record of water—fluid, turbulent, but occasionally lacking in solid ground.

Their sophomore effort, ‘The Earth Is Silent’ (2019), marked a significant maturation. It was a masterclass in atmospheric restraint. Critics noted its beauty and its reliance on the “Peaceville Three” tropes, yet it was praised for its execution. That album was a work of observation; it stood on the shore and watched the waves destroy the lighthouse, accepting the destruction as a natural, indifferent consequence of time.

It was an album of cosmic detachment, where human suffering was merely a speck of dust in an uncaring universe. It captured the essence of nature in its “woe and supposed neutrality,” a record where the silence of the title was a philosophical stance—a resignation to the void.

Shifting from Silence to Fire

With the arrival of ‘A Throne of Ashes’ in late 2025, that resignation has been violently incinerated. The band has not merely released a sequel; they have undergone a philosophical revolution. If their previous work was the sound of a man weeping at a grave, this new offering is the sound of that same man realizing the grave was dug by a tyrant, and deciding to burn the cemetery to the ground.

The silence of the earth has been broken by the roar of human agency. This is no longer a meditation on the abstract concept of “loss” but a direct, snarling confrontation with the tangible sources of misery. The conceptual framework apparent from the music suggests a seismic shift from the Lovecraftian and the environmental to the political and the personal. The enemy is no longer entropy; it is authority. The band has moved from the cosmic dread of H.P. Lovecraft to the revolutionary fervor of a people pushed too far.

Released via AOP Records, this third full-length opus cements the sextet—comprising vocalist Eduardo Guilló, guitarists Casuso and Roberto Rayo, bassist José Yuste, drummer Diego Weser, and keyboardist David Muñoz—as pivotal architects of the modern European doom sound. Yet, to merely categorize this as “doom” is to do a disservice to the narrative complexity on display.

Weaving a central thesis of retribution through the fabric of their established melancholic sound, Sun of the Dying has elevated their craft from performative sadness to articulate fury. The record posits a difficult question: is it enough to simply mourn the world, or are we obligated to destroy the structures that make it unlivable?

Act I: The Ignition

The album is structured not as a group of songs, but as a linear descent into a necessary conflict. The opening movement does not ease the listener into the gloom; it establishes the moral justification for the violence that follows. It is the gathering of the kindling before the spark is struck.

The Awakening: ‘Martyrs’

The opening track, ‘Martyrs,’ serves as the manifesto for this new era. It is a piece of music that functions as a psychological threshold, a doorway through which the listener must pass to understand the album’s intent.

The track begins with a deceptive minimalism, a quietude that mimics the ambient nature of their earlier work. This initial silence is strategic; it is a false flag, lulling the listener into a sense of continuity with ‘The Earth Is Silent.’ However, the atmosphere is not peaceful; it is pregnant with a specific, vibrating tension. As the instrumentation swells, guided by Muñoz’s orchestral arrangements, the mood shifts perceptibly from mournful to ominous.

The progression of ‘Martyrs’ is a masterclass in dynamic control. Spanning over nine minutes, it refuses to rush its revelation. The guitars of Casuso and Rayo do not simply enter; they intrude, layering slow, grim beats that act as the heartbeat of a dying giant. The riffing here is minimalist but heavy, relying on the sustain of the chords rather than technical intricacy to convey weight. This “aria of sheer obscurity” grows organically, like a storm front moving across a plain.

Eduardo Guilló’s performance on this track is nothing short of a revelation. He moves between a cavernous, sorrowful timbre and a jagged, enraged growl with a fluidity that suggests a fracturing psyche. This vocal interplay mirrors the internal conflict of the album’s protagonist—the struggle between the comfort of apathy and the pain of action. When he delivers the deep, enraged gutturals, they are not merely “death metal vocals”; they are the sound of the martyr realizing the futility of their sacrifice.

The concept of the “martyr” here is subverted. In traditional religious iconography, the martyr is a figure of holy submission. In the world of ‘A Throne of Ashes,’ the martyr is a victim of “sheer obscurity,” a life wasted in service to a silence that never answers back. The track functions as a slow-motion realization of victimhood. By the time the song reaches its crescendo, the transformation is complete: the mourner has become the accuser. The “martyr” refuses to die quietly.

The Declaration of War: ‘Black Birds Beneath Your Sky’

If ‘Martyrs’ is the internal realization, ‘Black Birds Beneath Your Sky’ is the external declaration. It is here that the album’s central thesis—“We came to burn your throne of lies to ashes”—is delivered with unambiguous ferocity. This track represents the moment the band abandons the abstract for the concrete, shifting from the ethereal to the terrestrial.

The lyrics of this track are among the most potent the band has ever penned. They are not vague poems about sorrow; they are specific indictments of power. The imagery of “fragments of ice” and “broken glass inside your throat” invokes a visceral, physical pain that demands to be felt. The “rage” described is not a mood; it is a weapon, “the rope that seals our revenge.”

The central metaphor of the “throne of lies” grounds the album in a struggle against a specific, oppressive force. This is not a fight against the universe; it is a fight against a “tyrant” who built “towers of gold” with the blood of the people. The band explicitly positions themselves and their listeners as the “black birds”—the scavengers, the omens of death, the “faithless Gods” who have come to reclaim their world.

This imagery of the “black birds beneath your sky” suggests a darkening of the heavens, not by storm clouds, but by the sheer number of the dispossessed rising up to blot out the sun.

The track reflects this insurrectionist spirit. The drumming from Diego Weser is militaristic, abandoning the loose, jazzy swing that sometimes characterizes funeral doom in favor of a pummeling, disciplined march. He employs crushing drums that hammer in the name of doom, providing a backbone that is as rigid as it is heavy. The guitar work enhances the band’s heaviness to a whole new level, using old-school tones that introduce a jagged, saw-toothed texture to the sound.

There is a noted “jumpy syncopation” in the track that some critics have found jarring, described as if the band “got forced into a hoedown but were really miserable about it.” However, one could argue this rhythmic disruption is intentional—a sonic representation of the chaos of revolution.

It is the sound of the machinery of state breaking down. The track stands as a high-water mark for the band’s ability to merge the melodic with the abrasive. The central melody is undeniably catchy, a sorrowful hook that burrows into the memory, yet it is delivered with such crushing heaviness that it never feels accessible in a pop sense. It is a war anthem for the defeated.

Act II: The Sorrowful Mirror

Having established the conflict, the album retreats into a period of introspection. The middle section of the record explores the cost of this rebellion. It acknowledges that even righteous rage leaves scars, and that to fight the darkness, one often has to let it inside.

The Duet of Ash and Ember: ‘With Wings Aflame’

The transition into ‘With Wings Aflame’ offers a necessary contrast in texture and tone. Here, the band employs the classic doom metal trope of the “beauty and the beast” vocal duality, recruiting Teresa Marraco of the one-woman project Antinoë to provide a counterpoint to Guilló’s gutturals.

The inclusion of the feminine voice is a nod to the genre’s history—specifically the mid-90s output of Theatre of Tragedy or Draconian—but it is executed with a modern sensibility. Marraco’s vocals are not merely decorative; they introduce a character of conscience to the narrative.

If Guilló represents the rage of the revolution, Marraco represents the sorrow of the aftermath. She is the mournful spirit that observes the burning world with regret. Her performance adds an extra touch of finesse and melancholy, creating a dialogue between the destructive and the restorative forces at play.

This track stands out as the album’s most musically diverse offering. It ventures into melodic and blackened doom metal territory, featuring quicker pacing and more complex guitar harmonies than other songs. A crucial element is David Muñoz’s keyboard work and orchestrations, which establish a rich, cinematic atmosphere that elevates the guitars from a heavy, sludgy sound to a symphonic one.

The song’s title, ‘With Wings Aflame,’ suggests an Icarus narrative—a creature destroyed by its own ascension. It captures the tragedy of the revolutionary who burns up in the atmosphere of their own fervor. The interplay between the “reassuring” duet and the eventual “plunge back into a torpor” mirrors the cycle of hope and despair that defines any struggle for change. It serves as the emotional anchor of the album, reminding the listener that behind the armor of the warrior lies a beating, vulnerable heart.

The Weight of History: ‘The Greatest of Winters’

Following the melodic interplay of the previous track, ‘The Greatest of Winters’ plunges the listener back into the freezing void. This piece is perhaps the most divisive on the record, primarily due to its bold instrumentation choices and its uncompromising heaviness.

The track opens with a distinct organ motif provided by David Muñoz. This choice has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters, with comparisons to “Emerson, Lake & Palmer trying to write a funeral doom record,” described as “kooky” and “pantomime.” However, within the context of the album’s narrative, this choice is brilliant and necessary.

The organ brings a funereal, religious solemnity to the proceedings. It transforms the song from a metal track into a dirge performed in a desecrated cathedral. It evokes the grandeur of high tragedy, suggesting that the “winter” being described is of biblical proportions.

Beneath the controversial keyboards lies a foundation of pure, unadulterated heavy metal. The track is described as “heavy-as-hell” and “Black Sabbath-infused,” stripping away the gothic romance to reveal the genre’s bluesy, riff-centric roots. The tempo is sluggish, mimicking the physical sensation of trudging through deep snow.

Guilló’s vocals here are described as “primeval death metal,” a raw, animalistic vociferation that contrasts with the sophistication of the organ. The song captures the essence of a “great winter”—a period of dormancy and death that feels endless. It functions as the album’s nadir, the point of absolute zero where all hope seems to freeze.

The “isolated drum sprint” at the beginning tricks the listener into expecting speed, only to slump into the “slowest, doomiest pick of the bunch,” a structural joke that emphasizes the inevitability of the slow-down.

Act III: The Labyrinth and The End

The final act of the album moves from the physical battlefield to the psychological one. It explores the mental imprisonment that precedes and follows the act of rebellion. We move from the throne room to the dungeon, and finally, to the grave.

The Monster in the Maze: ‘House of Asterion’

‘House of Asterion’ stands as the album’s conceptual masterpiece. Drawing its title and thematic weight from the short story ‘The House of Asterion’ by Jorge Luis Borges, the song retells the myth of the Minotaur not as a monster, but as a prisoner.

In Borges’ story, Asterion (the Minotaur) does not see himself as a beast. He views his labyrinth as a palace of infinite doors, and he waits patiently for his “redeemer” (Theseus) to come and free him from his loneliness, not realizing that “freedom” means death. Sun of the Dying makes use of this narrative to deepen the album’s critique of power and isolation. The Minotaur is the ultimate victim of the “Throne of Ashes”—a being created by the sins of royalty, hidden away to rot, and demonized by the outside world.

The music mirrors the structure of a labyrinth. It is repetitive, hypnotic, and disorienting. The riffs cycle back on themselves, creating a sense of claustrophobia. The track is described as “sluggish, somber, and hypnotic,” with a saturation that strikes repeatedly. There is no verse-chorus release here; only a spiraling descent into the center of the maze.

The dynamics of the track are crucial. It excels at swapping between a quiescent reckoning with loss and raging against the vicissitudes of an unkind fate. The song builds to a funeral pyre conflagration, a string-led finale that suggests the final liberation of death—the moment the “redeemer” finally arrives. Guilló’s vocals embody the Minotaur’s confusion and his tragic innocence, turning the monster into a figure of profound empathy.

The Final Breath: ‘Of Absence’

The journey concludes with ‘Of Absence,’ a track that serves as the epilogue to the violence. After the fire, after the rebellion, after the maze, only the silence remains. But unlike the “silent earth” of their previous album, this silence is heavy with the specific weight of who is missing.

The track is an overdose of doom metal, a sprawling, seven-minute meditation on grief. It begins with a deceptive calm before plunging into a bath of coldness, a sonic shock that mimics the sudden, physical realization of loss. The instrumentation is stripped of the martial aggression found in ‘Black Birds’; instead, it washes over the listener in waves of distortion and melody.

The title itself, ‘Of Absence,’ suggests the presence of absence—the psychological phenomenon where the missing person becomes more real in their absence than they were in life. It is the heavy regret described by critics, the burdensome longing that feels like Atlas hoisting the globe.

Crucially, the track—and the album—closes with a spoken word sample. While the specific source is often debated, the thematic resonance aligns with the great metaphysical poets of grief, recalling the sentiments of John Donne or Ben Jonson. It speaks to the idea that “absence, darkness, death: things which are not” can re-beget a person.

This ending is a masterstroke. It reframes the entire album. The rage, the fire, the revolution—it was all a reaction to this singular, devastating loss. We burned the throne not because we hated the king, but because we missed the one the king took from us. The album fades not with a bang, but with the haunting resonance of a voice speaking into the void, leaving the listener alone with their own ghosts.

Production and Aesthetics

The production of ‘A Throne of Ashes’ plays a pivotal role in its storytelling. Recorded at The Empty Hall Studio and mixed and mastered by Javi Félez at Moontower Studios, the soundscape is vastly different from its predecessor.

Where ‘The Earth Is Silent’ was airy and spacious, emphasizing the “silence” of its title, this record is dense and suffocating. Javi Félez has sculpted a mix that pushes the guitars to the absolute front, creating a wall of sound that feels physical in its impact. The “saturation returns regularly to strike us,” creating a dynamic range that is both exhausting and exhilarating.

The drums, recorded by Diego Weser, are thunderous. They lack the reverb-heavy distance often found in atmospheric black metal, instead opting for a dry, punchy immediacy that hits the listener in the chest. This production choice emphasizes the “terrestrial” nature of the album; this is music made of earth and stone, not starlight.

The artwork by Manuel Cantero complements this sonic shift. It avoids the abstract, nebulous shapes of cosmic horror in favor of starker, more evocative imagery. The visual and auditory elements combine to create a cohesive product that feels curated rather than assembled. Every cymbal crash, every brushstroke, and every lyric serves the central thesis of tangible, terrestrial despair.

The Verdict of Fire

In the final analysis, ‘A Throne of Ashes’ is a triumph of narrative metal. Sun of the Dying has successfully navigated the difficult transition from promising genre act to essential artist. They have done so by rejecting the safety of their established sound. It would have been easy to write another album about the ocean or the stars—topics that require no emotional risk. Instead, they chose to write about the ugly, messy, violent emotions of rage, regret, and revenge.

The album succeeds because it understands that doom metal is not just about playing slowly; it is about feeling deeply. It makes use of the tempo and weight of the genre to give these emotions the space they need to breathe and to terrify. Grounding their sorrow in the fires of revolution and the tragedy of the labyrinth, they have created a work that resonates on a human level. It is a record that admits the world is broken, but refuses to accept that it must remain silent about it.

It stands as a monument to the contradictions of the genre—where anger and sorrow coexist in a suffocating balance. It forces the listener to stare into the abyss, not to find comfort, but to find the motivation to strike back. In a year crowded with releases, ‘A Throne of Ashes’ distinguishes itself by its refusal to look away. It is a difficult, demanding, and ultimately rewarding journey through the darkest corridors of the human experience.

Sun of the Dying has built a throne, not of gold, but of ashes. And from that throne, they rule a kingdom of magnificent ruin.