Throne Of Mortality

To understand how Throne of Mortality formed, one must go back to a year before their foundation. In a high school in Edison, New Jersey, two teenagers would meet by coincidence of one wearing a Mr. Bungle t-shirt. That autumn they would discuss many music related subjects but things were halted when Alexandre Julien went away for a few months. Upon returning in spring of 2005, Howard Change introduced to Alexandre Julien a variety of black and death metal bands. During this time, a metalcore influenced band was in the works with Alexandre Julien (as Virkelig Død) on guitar, Howard Change (as Sabbat) on vocals and a loser named Dan on drums. The duo would kick out Dan and begin focusing on a serious black metal approach, fading out the death metal influences (mainly Hypocrisy). They would start jamming with Mike Obregon as a new drummer and a revolving line of bassist, including Mike’s brother, Chris Obregon and another named Blair Gerold, each lasting a single rehearsal. Throne of Mortality as a trio (Howie, Alex and Mike) lasted under a month and just when the band name was finally set on “Throne of Mortality”, Mike would quit to focus on his other band Hammerhead.

At this time, Howie would also start playing bass and write some material on his own, in addition to lyrics. Alex, on his side, would demo the first recorded Throne of Mortality material as guitar only demo on the “Summer ‘05” digital demo in the middle of summer 2005. In early September of 2005, right before Howie went off to live on the campus of Rutgers University and put a dent in the band, they would record their first official demo during a rehearsal. It was dubbed on tape but failed to be distributed. Alexandre Julien continued to demo guitar tracks in the “Fall ‘05” and “Winter ‘06” digital demos, and started writing lyrics, hoping that Howard Change would return during the vacation to continue the band. However when Howie joined Funeral Junkie (which eventually became Black Albatross) the feelings of despair overcame the situation and Alexandre Julien decided to take over vocals himself. During the next eight months, guitar and vocal demos were recorded for a planned EP entitled “Monumental Dedication”, ideally based on various subjects of love for female vanity and obsession on the macabre. Five songs were demoed and would be given to close friends as “Monumental Dedication Demos”, through Mortification Records.

Alexandre Julien himself now moving back to Montreal for school, was forced to stop practicing vocals (growling) as he was living with family members. Though the first EP was never professionally recorded, due to lack of band members, he continued to write new material, now being very influenced by Mütiilation, for a second EP due to be titled “Morbid Depression”. Alex would record guitar demos of four songs for this EP, but after this, the sound quickly started to shift towards a more atmospheric black metal genre. This atmospheric black metal material would become Alex’s next band, Vision Lunar, which co-existed simultaneously with Throne of Mortality during the fall and winter of 2006. Upon returning to New Jersey in January of 2007, Alex would officially announce Throne of Mortality as dead and would delete the myspace page to focus solely on Vision Lunar.

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