The Crown’s New Album ‘Crown Of Thorns’ Coming Oct…

Here come the Swedes and their death metal. Earlier this morning, The Crown pulled back the curtain on their 12th studio album, Crown Of Thorns. Set to release on October 11 through Metal Blade, the new record is the band’s follow up to their 2021 release Royal Destroyer.

Boasting 10 brand new tracks (and three bonus songs), guitarist Marko Tervonen said the album was a sort of departure from their previous works in some ways, marking it as a point of progression for the band and its sound.

“For me, Cobra Speed Venom and Royal Destroyer are like siblings. [We wanted] to make sure that we would take a step forward, get a bit more out of our comfort zone on Crown Of Thorns. We really wanted this to sound like a new, fresh album and I believe we did it.”

One area of pride for the band, surprisingly enough, was the album’s artwork. By including features from their hometown, Tervonen said he hoped fans would be able to see the “full circle” nature of this album.

“I had the idea that we should work a bit backwards. I pushed to create the artwork very early in the process. We wanted the album cover to include a bridge from our hometown Trollhättan called Strömkarlsbron. It has this cool statue on it named ‘Strömkarlen’ [a water spirit]. It made sense to loop it all back to the town where everything started; as most people know, we were called Crown Of Thorns for a few years before we had to shorten the name.”

As for the single itself, it’s every bit as brutal as you’d expect from The Crown. Thanks to the 2022 additions of drummer Mikael Norén and bassist Mattias Rasmussen, along with the fact that lead guitarist Marcus Sunesson rejoined the band, Tervonen called the single an “energy boost.”

“‘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.”

Crown of Thorns will be available on October 11 via Metal Blade Records, but you can preorder your copy today.

Crown Of Thorns Track Listing:

1. I Hunt With The Devil
2. Churchburner
3. Martyrian
4. Gone To Hell
5. Howling At The Warfield
6. The Night Is Now
7. God-King
8. The Agitator
9. Where Nightmares Belong
10. The Storm That Comes
11. Eternally Infernal (Bonus Track)
12. No Fuel For God (Bonus Track)
13. Mind Collapse (Bonus Track)