With over three decades shaping the shadowed depths of European black metal, ENTHRONED return with “Ashen Advocacy”, the third single from their forthcoming twelfth full-length, Ashspawn. Conceived as the album’s culminating rite, the track manifests as a slow-burning psalm of judgment and renewal, a psychological tribunal where the self stands divided between accuser, accused, and judge.
“Ashen Advocacy” unfolds in solemn escalation: ritualistic percussion and mid-tempo dissonance rise toward an overwhelming conflagration of sound. Each riff bears the weight of invocation, its tension thickening until the song collapses into cathartic blaze. Fragments of melody surface briefly, only to be consumed by distortion. Nornagest’s commanding vocal presence moves between invocation and verdict, channeling both condemnation and release. The result is an act of purification rendered through flame-bridging the physical and the metaphysical.
Lyrically, the song distills Ashspawn’s core: rebirth through negation. Mantras such as “Accuser and accused, we are one in the same” and “Through fire, we are forged anew” dissolve the boundary between guilt and absolution. The closing incantation, “Sordes Te, Egregia Sordes Te”, completes the album’s ritual circle, marking the death of false divinity and the rise of liberated consciousness from the ashes.
Listen “Ashen Advocacy” on YouTube:
Pre-order / Pre-save Ashspawn: orcd.co/enthronedashspawn
