Of Darkness....

I don't listen to "Of Darkness...." much, despite it having many of the qualities I love in death metal. This is a dark, atmospheric, enigmatic record with lots of riffs and enough weirdness to be endearing. The songs are good. The band had their own sound that was distinct from the trends of the time (and since). This album also has a Studio Sunlight production courtesy of the legendary Tomas Skogsberg, so the guitar sounds beefy and the drums sound real. Still, every time I play this album I'm left with an underwhelming feeling.

Digging deeper into the history of this record reveals some clues as to why this might be. "Of Darkness...." leans heavily on the band's pre-album material. Seven of the eight songs here had already been released elsewhere. This is common for death metal debut albums from the period, who often compiled the best of the demo era with a singular production aesthetic. Therion conformed in this respect. They presented two songs from their first demo, one from their second demo, and all four from the "Time Shall Tell" EP. This format works well for most death metal bands. The reason it hampers Therion is because of their progressive ethos. Each of their demos saw them edging further along their own path of abstract expression. "Of Darkness...." was a mere exercise in consolidation.

The album feels rushed. The sequencing is wrong and it doesn't flow as it should. "The Return" is a bad choice of opener. It is a good song in an old school death metal way, but it comes from the band’s first demo. Contrast it with the definitive opening tracks on other Stockholm death metal debuts (e.g., "Left Hand Path", "Override of the Overture", "Harbouring the Soul"). It is not a statement song by any measure. I think "Asphyxiate with Fear" would have made a better opener, but its relative maturity and complexity sounds odd after "The Return". The third song ("Morbid Reality") was also taken from the first demo. This jostling around between the eras is off-putting. It is worsened by the fact that two of the best songs ("Time Shall Tell" and "Dark Reality") are relegated to the end. This was done to conceal the fact that the band ran out of studio time and thus included the EP recordings of these two songs (i.e., it was fudged at the last minute).

Of course, this album contains plenty of great old school death metal. Therion were fine song-writers and the riffs were crushing. Peter Hansson's soloing sounds thoughtful and melodic, as always. The band also made better use of ambient keyboards here than on their previous recordings, adding to their supernatural feel. Still, I can't help but feel that “Of Darkness....” was a missed opportunity. It is a solid death metal album that will appeal to fans of early At the Gates and early Darkthrone, but Therion could have done better. All these songs sound fresher (and heavier) on the demos and on the "Time Shall Tell" EP (including the two songs that were taken from that recording, oddly enough).

We all know Therion as an ambitious, innovative, and skilled symphonic metal band around the only remaining founding member, Christofer Johnsson. This Swedish legend has developed its very own, unique operatic sound over the last couple of decades, but Therion was always open-minded about experiments, and has played in rather different genres and styles. The band has continued to do so since its foundation under the moniker of Blitzkrieg in 1987, when Johnsson and his band mates were only about fifteen years old. The band quickly changed its name to Megatherion and then on to Therion in 1988. Therion itself started to play a mixture of thrash and death metal on its first demos, which led to a full length debut, Of Darkness…, which was released in early 1991. If you are one of those who have known Therion for its later symphonic metal milestones, you should be cautious before purchasing or even listening to this record. It’s a good release to my ears, but is very different from the band’s later works.

Of Darkness… offers a style of death metal that unites bleak atmospheric passages with faster, unchained technical instrumental work. There are also slower moments that are clearly influenced by early doom, and there are even ambient, atmospheric hints at black metal, which was very popular around this time in Scandinavia.

Despite raw production (no matter if you purchased the original or the remastered The Early Chapters Of Revelation compilation from 2000, which includes Therion’s first three records plus a couple of mostly forgettable bonus tracks in the form of alternate versions and demos of some songs from these albums) and the young age of all involved musicians, this album is filled with stunning atmosphere, great song writing ideas, and solid technical abilities. Especially those songs which include slower passages deliver soundscapes that would fit into any grisly horror movie. The opening “The Return”, featuring a lot of synthesizer, is probably the greatest achievement from this point of view. “Asphyxiate With Fear” varies from pitiless death and thrash riffs to slow doomy bits with a melancholic touch. The varied first single “Time Shall Tell” is another apocalyptic dark ride filled with unexpected and creative changes in pace and style, and certainly needs several spins to grow. This track in particular proves to me that already Christofer Johnsson had huge song writing potential at that point.

The faster, more straightforward death metal tracks are engaging, but end up sounding similar, and are not my cup of tea. “Genocidal Raids” is the most interesting candidate among these songs. It has really fast and evil passages that will bring you to the edge of your seat, and is probably among the most aggressive songs the band has written in its career.

In the end, it’s interesting to discover Therion’s roots on Of Darkness…. Recorded back in August and September 1990 in Stockholm, the band definitely did the best it could if we take the age of its members, their financial possibilities, and their talent into consideration. This record is an atmospheric death metal release with lightly amusing horror lyrics and a few bleak twists here and there. Fans of Scandinavian old school death metal and those who occasionally listen to bands like the creative Swiss extreme metal band Celtic Frost should be happy with this. It’s really not a bad record, but bears no comparison to the band’s later accomplishments. Anyone else should start their musical discovery of Therion with a more recent release. The follow-up, Beyond Sanctorum is changed and sounds already much more original than Of Darkness….

Originally written for Black Wind Metal

If your attraction to Therion's music stems solely from their later work, which incorporates increasing use of choir and orchestra to create conceptual, gothic metal symphonies, then their earliest albums might be a little outside your comfort zone. But there was a time in which Therion produced some bleak and evil death metal, with only the barest hint at the band's future direction.

This hint comes in the form of synthesizers, which are used on the opening track "The Return" to create another level of atmosphere behind the dense and central guitars. The guitars are so thick on this album, broiling beneath Christopher Johnsson's reverbrous grunts, that you feel like you are drowning in molasses. "Asphyxiate With Fear" is a faster flurry of vomitous death metal, more in line with early, thrashing Pestilence. In "Morbid Reality", the Hellhammer/ Celtic Frost influence shines through the churning guitar rhythms, though it's faster to the point of grindcore. "Megalomaniac" has a good melody to follow, and "A Suburb to Hell" is one of my easy favorites, from energetic thrash to grinding disgust, and some haunting melodies thrown in there. "Genocidal Raids" is Hellhammer-inspired thrash that opens with a doomed atmosphere, and "Time Shall Tell" revisists this pervasive hybrid, with some sick leads. "Dark Eternity" ends the album with some beefy grooves.

Though charming enough for classic purists of the genre, Of Darkness is far from Therion's best work. The lyrics are average at best, and downright silly in some places. They range from the occult to the more relevant, social topics you'd find in thrash metal. McDonalds feed their cows with our children's lives. I knew there was a reason I liked to eat there.

You can hear the roots of Lepaca Kliffoth here, and the album holds its own against many forgotten peers of the age, but Johnsson and band would have grown bored writing more than a few albums like this, so the orchestral evolution of the band was a wise choice. It's pretty interesting to go back to this or Beyond Sanctorum, then explore the band's incrimental metamorphis through Symphony Masses and Lepaca Kliffoth to their later, diverse concept albums with all the guest musicians.

Highlights: The Return, Megalomaniac, A Suburb of Hell, Dark Eternity

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Did Therion play death metal? The answer can be quite shocking but it’s “yes”. Like Sentenced, for example, and other bands, also Therion started off as a death metal act to turn into something more acoustic and always less extreme as the time passed by. This “…Of Darkness” album is a dark piece of gloom death metal that has also some more dark and ritualistic passages. Lots of parts reminded me Cemetary because they are doomy with the keyboard sounds to fill the air with a sense of decadence and pure darkness.

The opener shows several slow tempo parts to other, faster, ones. These last sections are full of riffs and they are on up tempo with some blast beats restarts too! The vocals are bleak, lifeless and truly brutal with a good use of the growling tonality to switch on screamed parts too. The following “Asphyxiate with Fear” shows more of those thrash/death riffs and fast restarts after other doom moments. The screams are scary, distant and apocalyptic. The vicious, violent fast restarts are even influenced by a certain American death metal style and the production is not completely “Swedish” but more classic death metal with massive, gore guitars sound and the pounding drums.

So often these tracks have breaks where the symphonic elements are more present just to add a sense of suffocation and darkness. So, forget about gothic or silly melodies because here’s all about darkness and death metal. “Morbid Reality” again takes no prisoners thanks to furious blast beats and flowing riffs on up tempo. The mid-paced parts are quite long but dynamic enough to not result dull, derivative or boring. It’s the case of “Megalomaniac” too, but the blast beats are always present and the double kicks work is without stops.

The palm muting riffs are extremely well-executed and they take lots of influences from thrash too in style, but the guitars distortion is typical of the classic death metal. Some parts on “A Suburb to Hell” are just grind and they take a lot from the Napalm Death of that period while we can notice the return to the lead lines to add obscurity to the “calmer” parts, like also on “Genocidal Raids”. By the way, these parts are never left alone but they are always mixed with faster restarts, once again influenced by death and thrash metal.

“Time Shall Tell” has more dark, gloom sounds by the beginning with a slow progression. The screams, the long notes, the slow drums are perfect to create a souls infested panorama in a dark cave. The obvious blast beats and up tempo parts are always present to break the mid-paced, gore parts and add the deserved speed. The same speech can be done for the last “Dark Eternity” and probably this is the main problem of this album: it lacks in variety and catchiness. The structures are complex and dark, but not so memorable.

…Of Darkness is a good piece of old school death metal, but don’t expect a masterpiece. Maybe you can be stunned for its violence and the surprise of having learnt that Therion played hard and dark a long time ago more than the music itself…

Dark, Atmospheric and Heavy.

Three characteristics are present on this album, the first offering by the masters of the heavy, dark and atmospheric, Therion. Each song is a gem in its own right; there are no fillers, as each song had been previously recorded in some form. The boys had time to work on their skills, with the various demos and the Time Shall Tell EP showing off the earlier versions of these classic songs, with the exception of Genocidal Raids.

The guitars are vicious; they come through clearly but without having the sound of being overproduced. The riffs in each song are numerous and varied, but they meld together almost perfectly, there is hardly an awkward moment throughout this album. From galloping riffs to haunting tremolo pickings, they never get old. There are even technical parts, and they fit in with the rest of the song (such as Megalomania) nicely. Do I need to mention the solos? A Suburb to Hell has a short thrashy solo, while Asphyxiate With Fear has an atmospheric slow that brings in a doomy breakdown. Breakdowns in Therion? They exist, they aren’t like the Metalcore breakdowns, these are in for the atmosphere, and this is at a time when Metalcore was just starting out.

The drumming ranges from standard time keeping to interesting double bass patterns and relentless blast beats. The bass drum isn’t too loud, but sometimes it isn’t that audible either. With the intense riffing going on and how well the snare fits in with the songs however, I hardly notice that.

The vocals add a level of dark atmosphere that doesn’t appear as often on later albums, especially with operatic vocals and Christofer Johnsson’s development of a less menacing growl. There are effects added on this throughout, a sort of reverb that adds to the atmosphere. Other effects, such as a drop in pitch, aren’t overused.

One thing that this album accomplishes most of all is its dark atmosphere. This is demonstrated best of all with Genocidal Raids, which starts out with an eerie siren and background doomy riff. The song picks up in speed, with riffs that are atmospheric in their own right. Then it goes all out, probably at the fastest pace Therion has ever played, where the first verse is sung in just under 10 seconds. Snares and cymbals are going off chaotically while a tremolo riff provides the background atmosphere. The way Christofer Johnsson growls the line “And they will die, why buy death?”

The unfortunate flaw of this album is how the bass doesn’t seem all that audible. It doesn’t detract all that much from the album, but compared to how the bass in Therion’s work adds to the overall feeling of each song in their later albums, that contribution is missing from this album.

The songs are still fun to listen to, head banging atmospheric death metal tracks with killer solos and demonic vocals. The highlights: Time Shall Tell and Genocidal Raids, but the whole album is eerie and heavy.

Some listeners might find it hard to believe "Of Darkness" emerged from Sweden circa 1991, as it does not substantially resemble the other death metal from the same geographical area. The best way to describe the overall sound of the album is
a sort of reconciliation between the melodically defined Stockholm sound (Dismember, etc.), the rhythmic focus of NYDM (Suffocation, Morpheus...), and the extreme thrash and grindcore bands of yesteryear. This mixture serves as an interesting feature of the album, but hinders it from creating a truly unique identity.

As soon as the intro to "The Return" plods onto the sonic landscape, establishing the ridiculously heavy guitar tone characteristic of early Therion, you know the game is on. Also, from the very first track one can detect a relatively smooth transition from the chunky palm muted riffing reminiscent of Entombed to sections of chaotic grind fury harkening to Napalm Death and Repulsion. These short instances of lightning assault on the senses serve to establish a very well defined dynamic for a great majority of the tracks on the album. As opposed to breaking up the monotony of blast beats and mach speed power chords with a slow, deliberate crunch (not unlike Harmony Corruption era ND), Therion punctuates the megaton punch of NYDM rhythmic ideas with mind-warping moments of pure chaos. This is one of the earlier albums to successfully pull it off.

Melodic interludes and leads play a minor, albeit important role on "Of Darkness" (much less so than their following two efforts), reinforcing the more brutal moments and simply breaking up some minor monotony. Technical interplay between the two guitars add some class to the affair, and stand as impressive considering the young age of main songwriter Christofer Johnsson when these tunes were mostly composed. Drumming consists largely of typical thrash affair interspersed with the mentioned blast beats. Impressive instrumentation around the board, with raw vocals adding to the charm, makes this an easy album to listen to.

Despite the positives, the real lack of innovation hinders "Of Darkness" from really
reaching classic status. Therion directly reference this album with the opening track on "Beyond Sanctorum" but then quickly move into a different, more epic sounding (at least in some instances) direction which inevitably opened the door for their current, radically different sound. It seems almost as if this band was doomed to be less than truly astounding from the start, but "Of Darkness" and the following two albums are a decent addition to any death metal collection.