Well, this sucks. Iron Thrones, winners of Metal Insider and Scion’s No Label Needed Contest & Series, have decided to call it a day. They announced that they were no more via a Facebook earlier today, stating that the band have grown apart from each other. As winners of the 2010 contest, the band received an album produced and recorded by The Machine Shop’s Will Putney, mentorship from Shadows Fall and Ozzy Osbourne bassist Blasko, a shopping spree, a publicity and radio campaign for the album, and a website upgrade. The album that NLN yielded, The Wretched Sun, made the band a lot of fans, and they did a bit of touring behind it. Here’s the statement from the band’s Facebook:

Our sincerest apologies to those who were looking forward to a new Iron Thrones album. As has been somewhat obvious, we have been on an unplanned hiatus for the past couple of years, and although there were occasional moments of synchronicity, ultimately the flame died out and we gradually moved apart. We had a good run, and met a lot of fantastic people who truly appreciated our music. The same honesty that drove our creative process, now forces us to admit to ourselves that any new material we created as Iron Thrones would be missing what truly made our music special to us, and so it is time to lay this project to rest.

Sometimes, things just don’t turn out the way you would’ve liked. Time passes on, and things that you thought would never change, do. People change. Passions change. Regardless, the world continues to spin, oblivious to the changes within us, and we move on.

We have a feeling this might not be the last we’ve heard of the band, though. Guitarist Steven Henningsgard produced NLN runner-up Orwell’s excellent AVOHFASIH, so he might’ve picked up a few tips from Putney along the way. And the rest of the band is accomplished enough that they’ll likely find other bands in the upper midwest metal circiut.