Mares of Thrace - The Loss Alum Review

This article appeared in the June & July issues of Record Plug magazine.

Mares of Thrace The Loss 

Label: Artoffacts Records 

Nine tracks | released 05/16/25 | full length 

Someone once said grief is not one size fits all. It is customizable. Each person goes through it differently, depending on the person going through it and the relationship that person had with the someone they lost. The Loss is such a customized experience. The latest album from Canadian-metal duo, Mares of Thrace mixes screaming, shouting, and spoken word with riffs stemming from doom, hardcore, black metal, post metal, and even alternative metal.  The Loss is a raw, visceral meditation on the subject of grief. 

Track one, Anticipatory Grief, starts with singer Therese Lanz taking a deep breath in, before plunging you down into the bowels of anguish with a gut-wrenching growl. Then, ending in raw somber prose describing her emotional state at the beginning of this process. Lanz gives an enraged desperate plea when she screams out “just give me one more day” repeatedly in track two, The First Stage: Shock. 

The Loss is a raging earful. Being this is a concept album, each song builds on the previous one. This album can be consumed al la carte but is best digested as a whole. 

Fondly reminds us of: Helmet, Pelican, Cradle of Filth, Henry Rollins Band, Isis, Neurosis, Chat Pile 

Recorded at OCL Studios, mastered at Chicago Mastering service 

Therese Lanz – guitars/vocals, Casey Rogers/drums