Bleak Vistae

Tyranny is a young band hailing from Finland, they play funeral doom and this MCD is their very first material, which originally appeared in 2003 as a demo, but Firebox Records offered them a deal, so their first release under Firebox is a kind of re-release of the demo as an MCD. I have to mention that actually this “mini-CD” even if it consists only of 3 songs, it has a total playing time of 45 minutes. The music of these two guys is very slow and haunting; one of the guitars is playing ultraslow riffs, while the other guitar is playing unearthly and monotonous melodies. Sometimes you can hear notes played by a keyboard, these melodies are very ghostly as well. There is not a single tempo-break or a rhythm-change on this CD, moreover the themes are quite repetitive and all the 3 songs have very similar structure, so this isn’t an album which would you call diversified. Of course musical variety is not the most important aim of the band, on the contrary: these guys’ ambition is to play the most sinister and monotonous music, that’s funeral doom, isn’t it? And even if you play slow and creepy music it doesn’t mean necessarily that you are a fine funeral doom band. Your music has to be deep as well. Even if at the first auditions Tyranny’s music seemed a little bit uneventful, now I can sense a touch of profundity in their music. Musically I think they are somewhere between Hierophant, Catacombs and Until Death Overtakes Me, with the mention that they are a bit more melodic than the first two mentioned bands and they are less ambiental than UDOM. Those who like the aforementioned bands, or they are into funeral doom metal Tyranny could be a decent choice for them.

Bleak Vistae is the only release so far for this two man Finnish funeral doom metal project. These are the same guys behind the drone/torture/funeral doom band Wormphlegm. Wormphlegm focuses on building a sick and horrifying atmosphere; whereas Tyranny is more reflective and melancholic yet oppressively heavy.

The use of a second lead guitar played over the chords gives the music a haunting atmosphere reminiscent of the German funeral doom band Worship. Keyboards are also used to tastefully and effectively add to the atmosphere without sounding “symphonic” or “gothic” in any way. The drums have a natural and full sound as they slowly plod along with the music. The drummer utilizes the toms and cymbals throughout a good deal of the songs, thus keeping time while not becoming so clamorous as to break the trance-like atmosphere the music induces.

Vocals are mostly growls in the vein of Thergothon and Skepticism; they are guttural yet somewhat subdued, lacking the “roaring” quality that many death metal vocalists utilize. This is in no way a downfall and, like the subdued quality of the drums, works to maintain the trance-like atmosphere that the music invokes. Occasional high vocals can be heard buried in the background in some parts as well; they add a dissonant quality that gives the overall presentation an added surrealistic element.

Overall the three tracks on this EP create an extremely heavy and gloomy atmosphere, bearing down on the listener as every note lumbers forward. Bleak Vistae proves that Tyranny is a high quality funeral doom band that deserves to be recognized by anyone interested in the genre. This is highly recommended for fans of bands such as Thergothon, Skepticism, Worship, Wormphlegm, Moss, The Ethereal etc.

Here we have a three song, forty-four minute “MCD” from one member of the recent wave of underground funeral doom bands.

A brief rundown:

The first song, “Passing Through Ague”, sounds very much like Shape of Despair to me, both in the guitar melody and the vocal delivery, although perhaps a bit rawer and darker than anything that band has recorded. Second track, “The Leaden Stream” (is that a goof on Skepticism?) sounds suspiciously similar to the cult band Hierophant from the moment the first minimalist clean guitar melody hits. The third song, “Drown”, sounds a little like Evoken if anything, although it’s not quite conclusive. At any rate it fits in pretty closely with the other two tracks.

Generally, expect crawling, low-ended guitar rumbling combined with depressing keyboard or higher-pitched guitar melodies and growling vocals. Aesthetically, this is par for course, right down to the lengthy dark ambient segment on the end. The production is typical of a fledgling underground band: rather cheap, somewhat digital.

My summary opinion of just how good this album is overall? I don’t even really have one, honestly. I could just as easily praise this band for making a solid contribution to funeral doom as I could tear them up for making fairly nondescript and derivative music – if I were that kind of reviewer. On the one hand, I actually prefer this to a lot of similar but better-regarded underground bands like Mournful Congregation and the infamous Worship, but on the other hand, I’m still probably not going to listen to this again any time soon. It will probably satisfy people who have been enjoying the other underground ambient/funeral/drone/minimalist/what-have-you doom bands that have been popping up in the past couple of years.

And there are quite a lot of those, aren’t there? There doesn’t seem to be much of a second tier in “extreme” (for lack of a better word) doom metal: on the one hand there are obvious leaders like Esoteric and Skepticism which utterly dominate the “scene” (again, for lack of a better word) with their creativity and musical influence, and then there are the hordes of mp3/CDr bands, popping up here and there and almost immediately releasing an album or two, with seemingly at least two or three projects for each musician with all of the side projects out there. There’s been a bit of fumbling around with various ambient effects and avant-garde tendencies, pushing things further ahead into greater extremes, but as far as I can see, little outstanding innovation. Where are the new leaders?

Honestly, I think you’d do about as well to listen to any of a number of other obscure doom bands as you would this album, and if you don’t already own Skepticism’s entire back catalog it’s not really even worth bothering with.

This 2 man project called Tyranny is from Finland. This MCD contains 3 songs of very slow Funeral Doom with some Doom/Death influence. Well about this MCD what you can is very slow guitar riffs, very depressive keyboard riffs and very low growls. The first song on this is cd is called Passing Through Ague, whole the song its very depressive, so slow, so mournful, very low growl. The second song called The Leaden Stream, Its the same thing as the first song but you can hear in every song a lot of alternation. the 3rd and last song called Drown is the largest song of all 16:56 minutes long in this song you you hear more the keyboard parts and growls and on the background sometimes guitars. I think is one of the best Funeral Doom bands of this time.

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This EP makes me feel small.

A queer way to start a review, I know, but let me elaborate. Tyranny is a funeral doom band that I, and I suppose many other people, have heard about through their other band, the infamous Wormphlegm. I'm new to the genre, but I'm hoping that will change. Any genre that can put the words 'funeral' and 'doom' together, I will no doubt hit it off with.

Bear with me, as I try to draw the picture that comes into my mind when I hear these three songs.

Imagine being on a raft in the middle of a rolling ocean. Amidst billowing towering stormclouds in the sky above you, you see patches of a somber pale blue sky. From those patches of sky, from behind the towering stormclouds, comes a Beast so gargantuan that it's massive legs are all you can see stretching up sky. That beast is Tyranny. Tyranny begins to walk around, throwing you helplessly around on the waters, unaware of you in your insignificantly minute state. This creates track one, Passing Through Ague. Tyranny, in anguish over the solitude of it's mammoth size, so large that it cannot relate to any living creature, nor the mountains, nor the oceans, and doomed to live longer than all of them combined, begins to cry out in woe. But as you are thrown about on massive rolling waves, what you hear is The Leaden Stream, track two. Sorrow, gutteral cries, and the crushing pacing of this Beast is what you experience. Tyranny begins to wander off into the distance, lamenting further it's sorrows. This is Drown, and thus concludes Bleak Vistae.

The particular mood captured here is unmatched. The vocals are gutteral in a way that I didn't think humanly possible. If you didn't like the Wormphlegm demo for whatever reason, do try this, and if you still aren't impressed, my guess is that funeral doom is not for you.