Michael Barber has left Gloryhammer after a decade in order to make Wizardthrone his main band. The first result is Death Cycles, the project's first new song since its 2021 debut.
Wizardthrone has been a side project with a famous address book since it started: Hypercube Necrodimensions came out on Napalm and then nothing followed for five years, which is what happens when everyone involved has a first band. Barber taking it full time changes that arithmetic, and the line-up he has now finished assembling is the proof: he sings and plays guitar, Matthew Bell of Forlorn Citadel takes the other guitar, Keiran Allen of Akercocke plays bass, Christopher Bowes of Alestorm is on keyboards and Isak Olsson of Twilight Force on drums. The band say their first ever live shows are ahead of them.
They still call it extreme wizard metal. Barber says the new song moves away from the mathematical chaos of the debut towards something heavier and more direct, with melodic death, black and power metal still at the centre, and names Children Of Bodom, Dissection and Wintersun as the points of reference.
The words are about an alien entity collapsing every possible timeline into one point of existence, which is roughly the amount of restraint the genre name promises.