The Crown is back for the first time in three years with their new record Crown Of Thorns, due out October 11. Crown Of Thorns is named after The Crown's original band name before it got changed in 1998, and is the first to feature new bassist Mattias "Arvid" Rasmussen and new drummer Mikael Norén. Crown Of Thorns is also The Crown's first album since 2010 to feature guitarist Marcus Sunesson, who left the band in 2012.
"With Mikael, we managed to bring back a bit more of that crazy 'Janne Saarenpää' feel to the drumming, so that was a really cool energy boost. Mattias comes more from a punk/crust background, and he wrote 'I Hunt With The Devil' and 'Mind Collapse,' which turned out great," said The Crown guitarist Marko Tervonen. "This is definitely a step up in many ways, changing the way we worked on the CSV and RD albums."
On the single "Chruchburner", Tervonen notes that it's not usualy a style that The Crown touches on. Which is surprising considering how good it is. "'Churchburner' starts out with a nod to 'Postmortem' [Slayer] but then explodes into quite a different type of monster. It has a great groove to it, and it basically has a tempo/beat that we don't use that often. It's mostly in triplets. It's a very strong song with Johan being on fire here and Marcus adds a killer solo as well."
Pre-orders for Crown Of Thorns are available here.