Crown of Thorns

The Crown's line-up had changed around its two long-standing members, guitarist Marko Tervonen and singer Johan Lindstrand: drummer Mikael Norén and bassist Mattias Rasmussen joined in 2022, lead guitarist Marcus Sunesson returned, and founding bassist Magnus Olsfelt left that year. Tervonen pushed for the artwork to be made first; Giannis Nakos painted the Strömkarlsbron bridge in the band's home town of Trollhättan, with its statue of the water spirit Strömkarlen. The title is the name the band took at its formation in 1990 and was forced to shorten in 1997 by a Christian glam-pop act of the same name. As Tervonen saw it, every band makes a self-titled album at some point, and this was theirs. Tervonen was after speed, melody, weight, an epic scale and a punk edge. Rasmussen, who comes from punk and crust, wrote "I Hunt with the Devil" and the bonus track "Mind Collapse". "Gone to Hell" grew from bass riffs Olsfelt showed Tervonen, who then took it over; it was the first song the two truly wrote together, and their only one before Olsfelt left. "Churchburner" opens with a nod to Slayer's "Postmortem", and "Where Nightmares Belong" ends with Lindstrand shouting the chorus unaccompanied, then a lullaby-like vocal by Elina Tervonen. The guitars went up to D, after standard E on the first four albums and C from Possessed 13 onwards. Tervonen recorded the album at Studio-MT, and Jonas Kjellgren mixed and mastered it at Black Lounge Studios. "Churchburner" and "Gone to Hell" came first as singles with official videos, and Metal Blade released the album on 11 October 2024. The album proper has ten songs; the limited digipak CD, an LP with a bonus seven-inch and the digital release add "Eternally Infernal", "No Fuel for God" and "Mind Collapse". Marquee / Avalon's Japanese edition (MICP-11919) followed on 23 October with a Japan-only bonus track, "Hunger (2024)", as track 11. On 1 December 2025 the band announced that it would end after a final year of concerts in 2026.