1 Brighter Than The Sun (Radio Edit)
2 Sympathy For The Devil
3 Children Of The Underworld
4 Brighter Than The Sun (Album Version)

The band:
Johan Edlund; vocals, guitars & keys
Anders Iwers; bass
Lars Sköld; drums

I was able to get my hands on a copy of this single by Tiamat. Just to clear things up I got the two song CD with "Brighter Than the Sun" and "Children of the Underworld."

Both of the songs on this album are beautiful, and are proof that metal need not be harsh and necro in order to be good.

"Brighter Than the Sun" happens to be the best song on this CD simply for the fact that it doesn't stray from the center of it's origin of music. The use of the guitar and bass on this song are smooth and melodic. The guitarist makes good use of some bluish style riffs. The drumming is also very good. It enhances the music without getting into a screaming match with the rest of the instruments. What really sells this song though are the vocals. For once in a metal release it is discovered that it is in fact possible to create a good song without the use of Cookie Monster vocals or the use of high pitched distorted necro gutteral screeches. The female vocals in this song also increase the beauty of it.

"Children of the Underworld" is also a good song, and almost as good as "Brighter Than the Sun". Unfortunately the song loses points towards the late middle of the song. At this point a birage of cheesy synth riffs is heard. Whenever this comes on I can't help but cringe. Then I usually ask myself why the band had to ruin a good song with this shitty synth line. It wouldn't have been so bad if the song was a black metal song, but in an other smooth, beautiful song it had no place. --- metal-archives.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett bayfiles

back

1. The Scarred People
2. Winter Dawn
3. 384EKteis
4. Radiant Star
5. The Sun Also Rises
6. Before Another Wilbury Dies
7. Love Terrorists
8. Messinian Letter
9. Thunder & Lightning
10. Tiznit
11. The Red of the Morning Sun

Musicians:
    Johan Edlund - vocals, guitar
    Anders Iwers - bass
    Roger Öjersson - guitar
    Lars Sköld – drums

Is it just me, or are the Swedes slipping? It seems like the old guard of death metal have, one by one, shifted away from their traditional sound into something else. Opeth are the latest to pull this bait and switch, but way before them were Katatonia and Tiamat. The difference is, despite abandoning their beloved death/doom material, modern day Katatonia is really awesome, and they still have an edge to them even though they’ve foregone the harsh vocals. Tiamat, on the other hand, seem like they decided to embrace goth rock, and then got complacent, if new album The Scarred People is any indication. I’ll admit my prior exposure to the band isn’t great; they’ve been around for a long time, and their records all have pretty solid reviews on Metal Archives, so maybe hardcore goth rock fans can see something I can’t, but to me this record just seems bloated and unseemly.

It’s not like there aren’t any bright spots, granted. There’s some solid, David Gilmour-esque lead guitar work on tracks like “Radiant Star”, and there’s some clever use of structuring between “The Sun Also Rises” (which holds up as a decent ballad) and following track “Before Another Wilbury Dies”. Occasionally there are moments like these that give me the feeling that these guys have been cranking this style of music out for a pretty long time, and they have an idea of what they’re doing, but then there’s the weird stuff like the straight-out-of-1992 synths at the beginning of “Love Terrorists” that date this record pretty hard. Can all the bands who sound like this acknowledge that we live in 2012, and sometimes you need to update your sound or risk sounding really goofy?

Maybe this is an update for Tiamat, though – certain songs feature an orchestral element, such as the opening title track, but I don’t feel that they add much; it just manages to succeed at dragging that first track out longer than it needs to be. What strengths Tiamat possesses in terms of songwriting are best served by shorter track lengths; otherwise they risk getting bogged down in a quagmire of synthy nonsense. Also, Tiamat, just so you’re aware, “Messinian Letter” sounds like The Cure wrote a song for a Key West tourism commercial, that guitar line is totally “I’m on the beach and it’s 1987”.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I’m not seeing it. Maybe this thing actually rules really hard and I just can’t fathom it cause I was one of those kids who came up looking for br00tal stuff instead of trying to find the spookiest graveyard to take pictures of myself in. But outside of a few strong moments (the acoustic “Tiznit” gave me a Let Yourself Be Huge-era Cloudkicker vibe…you probably just learned everything you need to know about my musical tastes relative to this record), there isn’t much here that isn’t either executed better by others or strange and misguided. Sorry, ya’ll, I can’t help you. --- Ben Chipman, metalblast.net

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett bayfiles

back

01 Where The Serpents Ever Dwell (05:58)
02 On Golden Wings (04:58)
03 Ancient Entity (06:15)
04 The Sleeping Beauty (04:10)
05 A Caress Of Stars (05:22)
06 Whatever That Hurts (05:44)
07 Gaia (06:24)
08 Cold Seed (03:51)
09 Phantasma De Luxe (04:57)
10 Brighter Than The Sun (04:08)
11 As Long As You Are Mine (04:40)
12 The Return Of The Son Of Nothing (04:58)
13 Vote For Love (04:48)
14 Cain (05:06)
15 Wings Of Heaven (04:32)
16 Divided (edit) (03:58)

Members:
    Johan Edlund – vocals, guitar
    Anders Iwers – bass
    Lars Sköld – drums
    
Past members:
    Jörgen Thullberg – bass (1988-1992)
    Johnny Hagel – bass (1992-1996)
    Jonas Malmsten – keyboards (1991)
    Kenneth Roos – keyboards (1992-1994)
    P.A. Danielsson - keyboards (1994-1995)
    Dirk Draeger – keyboards (1997)
    Stefan Lagergren – guitar (1988-1990)
    Thomas Petersson – guitar (1990-1994, 1996-2008)
    Magnus Sahlgren – guitar (1994)
    Thomas Wyreson – guitar (2008)
    Fredrik Åkesson – guitar (2004)
    Andreas Holmberg – drums (1988-1990)
    Niklas Ekstrand – drums (1990-1994)

Even if this "Commandments" compilation comes to us one year before the last-to-date Tiamat masterpiece, "Amanethes", it still contains pretty much everything you have to know about this awesome Swedish band: from their death metal beginnings, you are taken step by step to their gothic and doom experimentations, finally arriving to Tiamat's newest sound, as expressed in their great 2003 album "Prey". Yes, as you may have understood already, the tracks in this compilation are ordered by date - from the oldest songs to the newest ones - so that even a guy who has never heard of Tiamat before is able not only to enjoy their musical uniqueness but even to understand their numerous genre and style evolutions.

Ignoring the Treblinka-phase of vocalist and mastermind Johan Edlund - Treblinka being his first death metal band - the album starts with Where the serpents ever dwell, a great, slow and doom-metal-related track taken by their first 1990 recording, and follows with two tracks taken by their second album that I don't like so much, even if especially Ancient entity is pretty famous among their discography; here we have slow, aggressive and doomy passages as before. The sleeping beauty comes from the awesome "Clouds" album - a more experimental one - and has some catchy melody (vocalist Edlund loves not only to alternate slow and fast parts but even to create some really catchy melodies and refrains); it's another song they still like to play in concerts, and - along the whole album - it marks the first important change in the sound of Tiamat. The next two tracks are taken by the much praised "Wildhoney" album, and they're arguably two of the best songs of the entire compilation; both Gaia and Whatever that hurts have still a raw style of singing, but they present many acoustic passages along with great vocal lines. Cold seed is a song created with one extremely interesting guitar riff, then we have an astonishing slow ballad, Phantasma de luxe, that contains what I believe is the best guitar solo Edlund has ever written.

The second part of the album, from track 10 to 16, changes significantly in genre and style, shifting to a more commercial, gothic and rock sound, extremely catchy and made up by great refrains and slow/acoustic passages. I'm going to stop the track to track review here - even because I know that it's not an always-fairly-viewed method - and I'm going instead to suggest to the reader a more deep and exhaustive look onto Tiamat's last career - and I'm speaking, of course, of their four latest full-lengths. Songs like Brighter than the sun and Wings of heaven, true masterpieces which are present on this compilation, are not only catchy gothic rock songs: they contain instead complex lyrics, and in their entireness - and this does not happen with many pop and rock songs, as everyone knows - they remain enjoyable after years and years of listening, and they're great to see live. This is my point of view, of course, but even songs like As long as you are mine, dominated by keyboards and easy-listening clean vocals and riffs, are really enjoyable even for those who were accustomed to Edlund's death vocals and to Tiamat's general "primitive" approach that characterized their first works. Last thing I have to mention is the last song, Divided, called by mastermind Edlund himself the best song he has ever written: its piano melody and the female voices Tiamat often uses actually make this song one of the best of the whole compilation.

Lyrics-wise, Edlund has always been what I may call a poet, and the listener needs to read carefully all the lyrics, that mainly talk about love, religion, feelings, ancient (Christian, Latin, Middle-Eastern history) and psychedelic arguments related to the spiritual world - as you can read in masterpieces like Whatever that hurts: I truly suggest to you to pay much attention to Tiamat's lyrics, always written in English of course, and to try to imagine the world Edlund is trying to recreate with his own songs.

This "Commandments" is heavily recommended to those who have never heard of Tiamat before - or who don't know Tiamat so well, but it's even suggested to every Tiamat fan who likes to have a great container of some of their best songs taken from all their discography. The album is produced by the American Century Media, recently abandoned by Tiamat, that shifted to German Nuclear Blast, and it presents a great sound quality even for what concerns the first "raw" songs of Tiamat. ---Verd, metal-archives.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett bayfiles

back