A Deeper Kind of Slumber

Here's where Tiamat started going off the deep end. If you couldn't tell with that shitty, shitty 90's CGI artwork, dildoflex logo, or Johan Edlund looking like an absolute freak and sexual junkie miscreant with that shaved head and mascara, the scary Marilyn Manson trends had inseminated poor Johan with a few drops of 90's douchery to the dome. With a hefty hour long run time, A Deeper Kind of Slumber has some rewards and twists for the dedicated listener, if one can step over the dog shit on the doorstep and ignore the pissass artwork.

The stuff that works is the most experimental and similar to the mellow stuff from Wildhoney. There's a definite Sisters of Mercy or Dead Can Dance vibe going on in a few songs ("Whores of Babylon" and "The Desolate One") which feel nice and distrubing. "Four Leary Biscuits" reminds me a lot of early King Crimson, albeit not nearly as ambitious or complex--not a bad thing, though. I really like the mellow songs, "Atlantis as a Lover," "Only in my Tears it Lasts," "Mount Marilyn," and the title track all sweep you away to grand landscapes of sexy pagan orgies, kind of like those Midsommar or Wicker Man movies, just without the murder. The lead guitar work is likewise magical, super melodic stuff that evokes David Gilmore's greatest moments. The brief instrumental, "Kite," is absolutely breathtaking. None of this is really a problem, considering that Tiamat were always way better at creating dreamy atmospheres rather than crushing metal.

The two lead off tracks, "Cold Seed" and "Teonanacatl" have too much of this limp wristed rock feel, which feel like frolicking through daisies and shitting yourself on mushrooms, compared to the deep, introspective nightmare moments of Wildhoney. Both of those also have these weird little breakdowns with electronic elements that sound super awkward and poorly mixed. It's a real shit way to start off an otherwise enjoyable album, so I guess we need to blame the 90's for that Diet Coke goth rock. And speaking of obnoxious electronic stuff, if you're not careful you'll skip "The Desolate One" when it begins with that corny shit...damn, it's almost like the Beach Boy's Summer in Paradise, when they put the DJ scratch on their updated version of "Surfin'" "Alteration X 10" likewise has some lame rock moments and twists kind of like the weaker King Crimson tunes, but is way better than the aforementioned two. "Phantasma De Luxe," despite it's lame name, brings to mind some old Soviet rock mixed with Pink Floyd.

I blame the mix for most of the problems with this album. The strange electronic instruments that are supposed to sound like real instruments come across as cheap--mixing them differently may have prevented this. A more organic sound in general would have brought this thing into the mid 80% ranking and out of the 70% near-death zone, and discarding the first two songs would have inched it well over 90%. And goddamn is it hard to overlook that artwork...they could have switched it out for some blurry, "artsy" photo and it would have been way better. I can only imagine Tiamat went further down the tubes after this album--Skeleton Skeletron has even more mascara and sexually confused 90's druggie rock vibes on the cover, so I gave that one a miss as wide as an ocean and have never looked back.

Tiamat even in their earlier doom-death incarnation have always been about the atmosphere, and given their propensity towards melancholy and arrangement-oriented music with a breadth of instruments and changing moods, as well as their taste for rock, it was only a matter of time really before the band took their sound beyond the rigid walls of metal and shifted closer to a style outside any one particular label. In other words they were destined to be one of those rogue bands with no homeland nor borders musically speaking, and the signs of their metamorphosis permanently outside the metal genre were gradually showing. The great thing about such bands is they, as Tiamat does here, still carry elements of metal but rather in tone than in shape: there's a darkness there, at least during select moments, that's a bit too obscure for a pure rock band, and it helps make the sound that bit more peculiar and rare.

Some tracks are flat-out substance abusing trips as can best be heard on 'The Desolate One', with its looped minimalist trance. Other songs show off a more comprehensive body of work, and while the music never gets technical, its subtle arrangements and various textures occurring simultaneously make for layered songs with excellent pacing and balance. This doesn't come across as just another arbitrary drug trip with a redundancy that requires the listener to be equally as high. The production is also pristine: the synths just like the strings sound full and warm, the clean guitars often have that nostalgic lightly chorused tone and the distortion guitars don't hold back in bringing some meat and metal-like dynamism and have that familiar Tiamat tone from past albums. The drums are rather hard-hitting for an album that could be considered melo, certainly a vestige from the metal days.

This also has sitars among a host of world-music exotic instruments (most obvious example: 'Four Leary Biscuits') as is often the case for this sort of album. There's so much going on at once and so many completely heterogeneous influences come together and form these unique moments in music that just don't exist anywhere else. It took doom-death metal heads from Sweden, with a penchant for Gothic ambiances and electronic tones, who happened to have an open mind about the different things that could be accomplished musically between orchestral strings, synths and samples, world-music instruments and a standard rock/metal setup to make this improbable hybrid come to life.

The two tracks that might stand out the most are 'Teonanacatl' early on the record and the grand self-titled finale 'A Deeper Kind of Slumber'. Those are outstanding with how they deliver the album's core concept of absolute purity and profound sadness. That sort of vacant, inexplicable yet spontaneous sadness inside we all feel from time to time. That last one in particular, echoing the feeling found on previous tracks leading to it (notably 'Kite'), is unadulterated sorrow, defenseless and almost resigned from life. Like the musicians have completely put their guard down, shed any mask they might've been wearing in a world of conventions, and exposed themselves at their most naked and vulnerable, pouring out their bare essence into the music with no filter. It's quite remarkable a song can ride on a basis of three clean guitar notes; just three notes for most of it; and be so heart-wrenching and poignant. It's that sort of crystal clear purity that fans of the album are after, as Gothic records will often feel too melodramatic and obvious and won't deliver a feeling of ripe sorrow that's embedded in skillfully crafted tracks like this.

The song-writing quality is absolutely on par with the thematic depth of the album and it's a rare delight from beginning to end. It's one of these albums that leave a permanent mark inside the listener: some albums are intellectually challenging and speak to the brain, others reach down to the heart and remain there.

Johan Edlund was surely encouraged to keep on experimenting after the success with “Wildhoney”; give jars of honey to the audience and see them sticking themselves to whatever you throw at them… that’s the spirit, and no one should blame the man for finding the right formula to keep the public happy. However, a rowdy belligerent fanbase is much harder to control than a stoned tranquil one… why not try something even more serene and meditative in order to bring mankind even closer to this semi-drowsy state where the mind becomes susceptible to all possible suggestions?

And it all starts with the album-title, a most fitting one which also makes bold hints at what the listener will bump into here. “Wildhoney II” this isn’t since all vestiges of doom/death rowdiness have been removed; this is a soundtrack to guided meditation sessions which is still on the more energetic side initially with the opening dark rocker “Cold Seed” stirring a misleading bouncier atmosphere. From then onward the album finds its seductive, charmingly monotonous niche and very seldom leaves it. This is a dark brooding post-doom/rock/ambient conglomerate which is built around heavy ballads (“Teonanacatl”, “Alteration x10”), subversive quasi-industrial oddities (“The Desolate One”), romantic melancholic idylls (“Atlantis As a Lover”), and interesting experimental compilations (“Four Leary Biscuits”) on which Oriental motifs, angelic female vocals, and various instruments come together for an effective alluring dance. Edlund only sparingly participates behind the mike, leaving the music to do the talking for most of the time, his hypnotic croon adding to the anti-climactic setting which doesn’t exactly need a 10.5-min lyrical balladic sprawler like “Mount Marilyn” as the title-track after it delivers this same approach in a much more compact and consequently more evocative manner.

With the audience already braced for something off-the-beaten-path under the honey-induced circumstances, the element of surprise isn’t very big. This effort is better than the preceding one, it’s more homogenous and it doesn’t annoyingly refer to a much more aggressive past every few minutes provided that the musician(s) has no intentions of siding with this past at this point in time. If you’ve gone over your past so be it; stay the new course. And Edlund does stay this new course here without vacillations, showing no interest in the metal arena anymore as this is nothing like a work of metal. It has much more to do with the mid-period Pink Floyd musings that seem like the man’s main influence… if only he has chosen the light side of the Moon for a change.

As a fan of the guy’s first three instalments, I can’t sit here pretending that I’m falling in love with these soothing sounds. The thing is that the more time you spend under their charm, the more you tend to appreciate them… I guess serene calm music can easily break through your ironclad barriers if you give it time. We humans are congenitally peaceful congenial creatures… or are we? So why am I not planning to give this opus another listen a few days down the line? In fact, I don’t think I’ll lend it another ear again. I won’t cause I don’t think this is a suitable clout for a once-sworn Sumerian crier. And I was quite certain that Edlund was going through a deeply introspective period of his life, for various reasons, hence his meditative ramblings; and that those would be abandoned once the supposed grief or sadness has passed…

and they by all means did, and quite fast at that as the following “Skeleton Skeletron” so nicely showed, a fairly pleasing dark wave/gothic rock parade that set a model which Edlund has been following ever since with a few unmitigated deviations. Yes, this delivery is way more suitable for the man and quite honestly, he hasn’t put a foot wrong ever since although again from a metallic point-of-view his more recent opuses fail to deliver as boisterously as, say, the works of Lacuna Coil or Flowing Tears. But this is a minor pick; Edlund seems quite content with life at present; and he by all means should cause, seriously, how many people do you know who are able to hypnotize mankind to a welcoming drowsy state?

Having heard a couple Tiamat songs on two different Century Media Identity samplers, I was very intrigued by singer Johan Edlund's "distinct vocal invitation" and the exotic aura from the songs, which reminded me of ancient Sumeria or somewhere else like that.
That being said, I decided to buy one of their albums. I really wanted to buy Skeleton Skeletron, but I couldn't find it, so I decided to buy a different album by theirs. I couldn't resist the whole vibe of the band. I just HAD to have one of their albums, even though the overall sound of the band didn't sound very riff-oriented.
I must say that this album is quite excellent. It doesn't have neck-snapping riffage, unholy blastbeats, deep, guttural vocals, or many of the facets of the more popular genres of metal, but it's unique because it's very emotional, subtle, and seductive. Tiamat is all about atmosphere, and this is what prevails on this album...like Dream Theater, Tiamat utilizes the reusable riff phenomenon. The only difference is that these riffs don't resurface on subsequent tracks. Many of the individual tracks have a single, unifying riff that repeats itself for a very seductive, mystical effect. See, repetition doesn't have to be so bad. Tiamat's music is just like water that's about to boil, but doesn't. Tiamat would rather keep the temperature just below 212 degrees Fahrenheit. They like to tantalize listeners with what could be, instead of gratifying them with what is, and this is what may drive many listeners away from this band. They just can't handle the heavy experimentation of this band. I personally am glad the band took the major direction that they did instead of just staying with black metal, which is what they were in their early days if I'm not mistaken.
What listeners will notice most about this album and this band is singer Johan Edlund. His deep, monk-like voice will enchant and possibly relax even the most hard-hearted metal purist. If someone else was the vocalist for Tiamat, the ancient, mystical effect would be greatly reduced or perhaps completely gone. Refer back to my review of Dream Theater's When Dream and Day Unite to see how important good vocalists are.
Another unique, excellent quality about this band is that they use a variety of instruments to complement the overall atmosphere of their sound. Ok, maybe just one instrument, but you get the point anyway. Much of the songs on this disc seem heavy on flutes, harpsichords, and other woodwind instruments of that ilk. This holds true ESPECIALLY on track 4, Four Leary Biscuits, which is AMAZING. There is a very exotic, almost Indian-sounding flute and a vicious, sexy rhythm throughout the song that is completely and utter intoxicating. You'll have to listen to it to truly hear what I'm talking about. I promise you that you'll be transported to India or another exotic Asian country.
I really don't understand why this band isn't more popular. They aren't especially talented per se and not aggressive, but does ALL metal have to be so straightforward and predictable? Jeez, I thought metal was all about innovation, and Tiamat is all about innovation and ATMOSPHERE. If you can't handle music that doesn't try to pound your face into the ground or solo so much that your ear drums become warped, then I advise you to stay away from this band. On the other hand, if you like music that's very meditative and elevates you to a higher plane of consciousness, then check out this band as soon as possible.