 |
 Established in 2008. Unbiased ever since. |
| HOME Reviews Interviews Editorials Collection U.S. Release List Exclusives MetalTube Live Contact | |
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| - | |||||||||||||||||||
| Review | |||||||||||||||||||
|
Therion is one of those bands that went through a dramatic change in their career, and any who don't know the story clearly haven't stumbled upon the band before, on purpose or accident. Therion formed in 1987 in Stockholm, Sweden, and wasa originally a Death Metal act. However, as time went on, for some reason the band shifted and went to performing Symphonic and Operatic Metal to the purest Operatic form, a style many Metal fans absolutely refuse to embrace. Over the years, the band has fine tuned their technique, and have released plenty of fantastic albums. However, Sitra Ahra marks the band's twelfth full-length effort, and really shows the band starting to do what I had personally feared would happen: Reflecting other common styles and taking away the beauty that this band has in their compositions. While it clearly would be hard to top the band's Lemuria and Sirius B efforts, which are considered the pinnacle of the band's career, the band's follow-up offering to those, Gothic Kabbalah, showed the band start to drift off into other directions, and Sitra Ahra solidifies it. Basically, Therion no longer has that jaw-dropping, mystifying beauty that many of their album had, but instead has seemed to replace it, at least time around, with a more modern day Gothic Rock sound, and approach to a more traditional Broadway musical sense with Operatic overtones to stay true to their style. There's plenty about this album that sounds fantastic, such as the early carnivale-like music that is present on "Land of Canaan", which is very moving a often somewhat depressing, though the pianos happen to give it a slightly upbeat feeling, but at the same time, this song still feels like something that one might expect to hear in a Tim Burton film, or even an Andrew Lloyd Webber production, which, to expand on this, rings even more true by the band's inclusion of certain keyboards lifted from the opera The Phantom of the Opera, which seems to be a big thing to do now in the Symphonic, Gothic, and now Operatic worlds thanks to Nightwish. You can clearly hear these keyboards, as well as much more, taken from this play on the track "Unguentum Sabbati". But, the main problem is that Therion does lift more then just from Phantom of the Opera. There are many tracks on this album that music fans, outside of Metal, will pick up on, including the obvious ties to "Land of Canaan" with The Beatles track "Hey Judge", and the very poor back-of-the-throat male vocal performance that is slightly altered that could be traced by to The Beegees, as well as the more recent non-Gothic Theater of Tragedy material, and makes one just want to start singing about the "Love Shack" or "Rock Lobster". But, these vocals also sound like they came off a recent Nightwish CD when not distorted, but far better. On top of that, "Sitra Ahra" starts off alright, but eventually just fades into a more familiar female fronted Gothic Rock territory, followed by a clearly Folk Metal inspired "Kings of Edom", showing signs of influence from even Viking Metal acts such as Amon Amarth. It really isn't until the track "Hellequin" kicks in that Sitra Ahra actually picks up, and even then it still isn't right. The material on this track just does not work out with the beautiful operatic vocal performances, and the rather poor rhaspy Black Metal style that sounds like one of the singer's choking horribly on something about to vomit, with much of the music coming off more as a poor mix of Joe Satriani with Therion's more Gothic sound, as well as Pink Floyd. Of course, the music does seem to progress into a far better, and darker, sense of music at this point, with a great performance all around for the track "2012", though the more higher pitched Heavy Metal main vocals work out, but definitely feel out of place on an album such as this. However, the operatic vocal styles, both male and female styles of all octaves and levels, are stunning and beautiful, matching the overall dark atmosphere that is given a sliver of light thanks to the keyboards that better reflect in the music and violins, lifting your heart up for an emotional section the listener can slip away to, and a perfectly suiting guitar solo that keeps with the now somewhat beautiful, dark, yet rather mellow atmosphere of the track. Once Sitra Ahra starts to become more of an original composition, there are only a handful of good tracksw to the release. Aside the aforementioned "2012", there is alo "Kali Yuga III", which will have certain listeners drifting to the Indiana Jones film series due to the lyrical content. The music to this track truly fits the band's style, coming off as both beautiful and dark at the same time, and well suiting the operatic vocal approach, though they come off more as something that you would find on a traditional Operatic-inspired Metal album, again, like Nightwish, then anything else. For the way the music is done, it works well, and not having very powerful vocals on this track actually works for the better, as the song is not strong enough to support that, being more of a lighter track that is a bit restrained, but in a good way. "The Shells Are Open" also makes for a fantastic release, though a little lighter and open compared to "Kali Yuga III", but still retaining a spacial beauty that the background opera vocals greatly push along. The problem is the song sometimes doesnt' quite seem to go anywhere, though the presence of a march to war feeling is clearly there and becomes the main premise for the song, even if it doesn't really do anything more fo rit. One of the more shocking tracks to this release, however, is "Din". This song is fantastic and comes out of nowhere, only because of it's throwback to the band's more Death Metal days. It starts off as more of a Progressive or Power Metal track with great Death Metal intensity and a Black Metal style vocal approach that seems to be more gutteral oriented, and not like the singer is choking to death line on previous tracks. The song is fast, and devoid of a lot of beauty, but when the Operatic elements kick in briefly after the falsetto vocals that build up to their presence, the drumming picks up more and the song just begins to feel complete, especially when the keyboards kick in, and the song abruptly ends. Sadly, again, this song seems to just feel like it goes nowhere, and doesn't necessarily have any real reason to be on the album, especially given how the band ends the track with it's darker operatic "After the Inequisition: Children of the Stone", which puts a fantastic closing to such a cluttered, chaotic, and downright confusing album, but it sure is damn good to hear from Therion in the long run. While Therion have never been one to stick to traditional means for their albums, many of their releases retained a dark, almost poetic beauty to them, lyrically, vocally, and musically. Sadly, Sitra Ahra really lacked a lot on all three elements, and seemed to succumb to plagiarism, and experimentation to compose this album. While the closing tracks stand out nicely on the album, though a few are still suspect, and not all, like "Cu Chulain", are as strong, or even just seem to go nowhere, they still capture the beauty that Therion can create. other then those songs, this album is a nightmare, and falls prey to many of today's stereotypical expectations with operas and musicals in general. Hopefully, this is the last tme we'll see such a confusing, as well as downright offensive to the fans of Therion, and classical or Operatic material, release from Therion. |
|||||||||||||||||||
| - | ||
 |
|