Tides of Awakening

Tides of Awakening is an apocalypse in the two meanings of the word. It is both the soundtrack to the end of the world and also a true musical revelation. It is less akin to the dirge-esque nature of its parent genre of funeral doom and more like an ever-building film score composed in the deepest pits of the earth.

It would be easy enough to dismiss this as mere background music. The album is comprised of four lengthy songs (plus one lengthy outro), and none of them change much over the course of their runtimes. Sure, there are small developments as certain layers drift in and out - guitars sink underneath rising synths and vice-versa, drums shift in complexity, etc. - but with few exceptions, as soon as a song begins you are kind of just along for a slow and weighty ride with an unshifting tempo that stubbornly refuses to break its concentration long after another band would have switched things up to keep the listener’s attention. It almost shouldn’t work, really. Yet Tyranny are no typical band. They do not care whether or not your attention is being kept. They just demand that you listen.

It’s this nature that immediately struck me the first time I spun this album. Each song is much like the one that comes before it and the one that comes after. They erupt through the speakers like a billowing storm and then keep rolling forward at their own unflinching goddamn leisure. Eerie, repetitive guitars wind their way through the dark ruminations of an ancient mind as the menacingly methodical drums count down the minutes ‘til doomsday. The vocals are massive and bellow like a monster from the most fathomless of oceans. “Sonorous Howl from Beyond the Stars”? That’s a really apt description for what they sound like. There are synths present here too, sounding almost like angelic choirs enthusiastically crying out for the Great Old One to come and take control over all the earth. It’s hard to tell how good the production is in any sort of objective sense because all of these elements just blend into one massive, uncompromising wall of sound that makes you assume by default that it’s succeeding at what it sets out to do.

Again, this is how all of the songs sound with little to help them stand apart from each other. If they didn’t have pretty concrete endings, you might think that the first track was still playing by the time the album drew to a close, especially since they all segue directly into each other with just the slightest amount of ambience allowing you to catch your breath before the cacophony continues. And yet they bring to life such vivid imagery that this never really becomes a problem. The album opens with the ambient thunder of drums as the rest of the layers - synths, vocals, guitars - start to pile in in an oppressive fashion, constantly making you question your safety in a world that isn’t made with you in mind. The album’s longest track, “Upon the War-Torn Shape of Cold Earth”, sounds like the death march of a hellish army until about halfway through when it shifts slightly and you instead find yourself staring at the barren wasteland of their battlefield, left blackened and without a glimmer of life. The one track that is distinct from the others is the nearly eight-minute outro “Entreaties to the Primaeval Chaos”, a soundscape that mimics the rise of Cthulhu from within the heart of R’lyeh and rumbles with enough force to wake the dinosaurs.

I’m not sure if I would call this album full-on scary, but there is a very real sense of unease that I get when listening to it. It’s almost like I’m constantly worried that I’m about to be devoured by the monster the record tries to both evoke and invoke. It is an incredibly punishing and merciless experience from start to end. I don’t really care what they say their lyrics are, that’s merely supplemental material - the vocals to me are clearly speaking death chants from an eldritch tongue no mortal can understand. If there’s a funeral in this funeral doom, it’s for the world as a whole.

The only real issue you might be able to bring up with this record is that you can’t just press play on it whenever you like. You have to be in the right mood for it, open to letting go of your body and mind and simply enduring the apocalypse at hand. Its slow, unchanging nature makes it far from the most accessible album even within funeral doom; yet it is a rewarding experience whenever you do sit down to give it a listen. It is fear-evoking and awe-inspiring. It’s one of those albums that first leaves you amazed at the potentials of music as a whole, and thereafter makes you want to grab the nearest person and evangelize. You want to tell them, “Listen to this. This is music on a scale like you’ve never heard before. Sit back and let yourself become lost in the uncomfortable knowledge of your own smallness in the face of forces more powerful than the human mind can imagine.”

Remember back in my review for The Crimson Idol where I mentioned that when I'm feeling blue, I tend to just listen to depressing music to wallow in for a time? And do you also remember my review for The Day It All Came Down where I basically wrote a really roundabout suicide note and framed it around a review? Well I'm in that kind of mood again. And since I don't drink or beat my children, I purge my negativity and cope with sadness by writing reviews about depressing metal albums and covering them with swaths of esoteric imagery. The culprit today? The ever absorbent Tides of Awakening, the only album from Finnish undertakers, Tyranny.

As far as I know, this is the first funeral doom album I've ever reviewed (depends on if you count Year of No Light I suppose), and one of the reasons I've always held off on writing about this genre, despite liking it plenty, is because I feel like once I write one, I'll have written them all. It's a good style, no doubt, and it's all about mood and atmosphere as opposed to riffing or melodies or something, like most of the high octane music I listen to. But the problem with the genre as a whole is that you can use the same four words to describe every album, and then just fluctuate how well each band handles every element. We know it's gonna be atmospheric, we know it's gonna be slow, we know it's gonna be based in doom/death, we know the vocals are going to be distant and deep, the only new information I can provide is whether or not each of these elements are handled competently on whichever album I'm talking about.

As far as I'm concerned, Tyranny handles everything marvelously. And yet, at the same time, I don't even really know what it is that they do at all. I mean, I can gather that there are Lovecraftian themes, but I don't give a shit. I hear they take big heaps of influence from genre progenitors like Thergothon and Skepticism, but I couldn't care less about that if I tried. All that really matters to me, and all that should matter to you, is that Tides of Awakening is monumentally heavy, and completely suffocating in its unbelievably oppressive atmosphere.

The songs themselves don't do much to differentiate themselves from one another, but once again that's not really the point. "Coalescent of the Inhumane Awareness" has a really haunting lead melody, but that lead melody doesn't sound all that different from the rest of the melodies to be found, so I wouldn't feel right singling it out like I just did, but I'm a hypocrite in the throes of crippling depression rambling about depressing music. The point is that when it comes to the actual musical aspects, this is exactly what you'd expect. Glacial pace doom/death riffs underneath layered backing synths and melancholic, haunting lead guitar. What I love about this guitar is that it doesn't ever come off like a guitar normally would, it instead manifests as this completely different entity; a completely abstract spirit that sends down gentle coos of reassuring warmth that get twisted into demonic abominations by the time they reach your ears. It's both pleasant and unnerving at the same time, and it works towards the overwhelming atmosphere in ways I previously couldn't imagine.

It's really the atmosphere that makes this album work. If I'm being totally honest, it's the only element that I can even recall or appreciate about it in most instances. Here I am giving a high score to an album that I'll fully admit to not even knowing the track names for (and there are only fuckin' five of them), but it's because this doesn't still with you for the same reason something from a more energetic genre will. I'm never going to hear a part in any given funeral doom album that makes me go "Whoa shit, that was awesome, what track was that?" like I would with an album in pretty much any other genre. That's a characteristic of funeral doom as a whole to me, and Tides of Awakening just exemplifies it. From start to finish, this is basically one monstrous plateau of misery and helplessness. Sure, each song builds and climaxes appropriately, but at no point does the music take me anywhere other than the loneliest place imaginable. It's basically just one huge, hour long experience where you just sit at the bottom of the ocean while the weight of all the water pushes down upon you, and you struggle for air for a short while before understanding the cosmic futility of your perseverance, and then simply waiting to lose consciousness underneath all the pressure. The entire experience is just one long funeral dirge, wherein you spend all of the time alternating between reflecting upon the mistakes you made and then cursing yourself for allowing it all to end with those loose ends still hanging. I can't even call this a "journey" like I tend to when trying to be vague and metaphorical with my description, because it's very static. At no point do I feel like my story is progressing, I'm just sitting here, being pummeled ever so slowly by the increasing weight of each wave.

See, I feel like the metal album that most accurately sums up the frustration of bipolarity, depression, anxiety, and most other self-crippling mental illnesses of the sort is City by Strapping Young Lad. Hell, there are even other albums within this very genre that I'm sure deal with much more emotional themes than whatever dystopian ballyhoo Tyranny drones on and on about here, but the general mood is almost perfect for what this kind of lethargic self loathing represents. When you're in a spot where the entire world is grey, and every attempt to move forward is met with your own body resisting you, sapping your will to even bother trying to improve yourself since you know that swimming ten feet upwards isn't going to get you out of that ocean, Tides of Awakening is the album that is playing in your mind. It's just dirge after dirge after dirge, reminding you that you are worthless and weak and will never get ahead as long as every time you look upward, you're met with miles of crystal clear water. You can see the surface, but my friend, you are not getting there. The vocalist may be deeply roaring about Yog Sothoth's pubic lice for all I know, but in my mind it's just the disgruntled bellows of my subconscious reminding me of all the mistakes I've made in my life and why I'll never see better days.

I can't keep doing this, all I can do is constantly compare the album to like being trapped under an ocean and then hamfistedly relate my own psychoses to it. Most people who suffer from these same issues (the sads and the mads) can understand where I'm coming from, and can likely relate to the album in this way as well. It's atmospherically debilitating and as emotionally weighty as a metaphoric iceberg. The four traditional songs are crushing and monumental, and the ambient outro is reflective and moderately horrifying. It's the extracurricular aspects of the album that makes Tides of Awakening so effective to me. It's the fact that beyond all the suffocating atmosphere, there's a vivid image of myself drowning in my own misery. Everything is overwhelming and I, personally, drown every time I experience it. This is an album (and admittely, a review) for me, not for you. This works because I can relate the smothering atmosphere to my own fears, it works because I react to certain stimuli the way that I do. If you don't share these same problems, then this just simply isn't going to connect with you on the same emotional plane that it does for me.


Originally written for Lair of the Bastard

Lofty, sublime doom from the Finnish merchants of despair, Tides of Awakening is the full realisation of the myriad ideas hinted in Bleak Vistae. The album consists of four ponderous dirges, each a microsymphony that unravels itself at a snail's pace, like a lotus gently unfolding its petal at the onset of spring.

As these songs meld into each other, they must be listened to as a whole, not individually. One must take care to be in the proper state of mind, however, so as to not become bored. This is by no means 'easy listening'. Despite its brooding tempo, a Lovecraftian unease and tension permeates every song of this work, serving to always keep one on edge.

The production is a little muddy and indistinct, but serves the atmosphere of the music well. It also makes the album feel like one long song, as with a deep listening, one cannot tell where one songs ends and where another begins. As funereal as these songs are there is as little aptitude towards suicide as there is towards living; they defiantly thrust against the current in the belly of the abyss.

Unlike most doom Tyranny are masters of atmosphere, carefully manipulating it at the microscale to bring about cumulative effects in the subconscious at the macroscale. It is frightening and yet beautiful; glacial and yet masterfully paced. This work stands, for all posterity, as a veritable monument to despair.

Tyranny is the main band of the folks behind Wormphlegm, that brutal, torturously slow band we all love. But how is Tyranny, their serious project? Pretty darned good.

This is how funeral doom should sound. Slow, oppressively heavy, and evoking atmospheres of surrealistic torment, death, and the apocalypse.

Instrumentally, this is, again, what funeral doom should be. Slow, repetitive, and heavy, but not tedious or mundane. Background keyboards help to keep things interesting here, although the riffs the guitars play are gloomy and interesting enough already. Drumming is a bit different for this particular sub-genre. While the typical, minimalistic style is frequently employed, the drummer also makes use of fast, quick, double-bass passages, which again help to keep things fresh.

Vocals are the traditional for funeral doom- inhuman growls, stretched beyond normal belief. Well done here, as they help to further add to the bleak, ruined atmosphere. Lyrics are fairly unusual, with some pretty abstract lyrics that generally seem to be about doom/the apocalypse/the end. A bit cliched by now, but I can't take points off for this- I always find these topics to be perfect inspirations for doom songs.

As was mentioned, lyrics can be a bit unusual, but are great nonetheless:

"Vast majestic sidereal
fabric of universe
resounds to the clarion
Echoes of creation
Echoes of before
the beginning of time
From before the throne
of Nuclear Chaos"

For different types of funeral doom, I listen to different bands. For dark, dripping doom, it's Catacombs. For noisy, depressive funeral doom, it's Nortt. For the more symphonic variety, it's Pantheist or Skepticism. Now, I have Tyranny...bleak and simple. A soundtrack to the End.

Tyranny is a Finnish duo that plays glacially slow and extremely crushing funeral doom that leave the listener shaken and uncomfortable. It's like the painfully slow march into impenetrable darkness. The riffs are massive, moving along at a pace so slow it's downright glacial, but the production quality is clear. The growled vocals are absolutely inhuman as they wail from the deep. The low tuned guitars create an absolutely chilling soundscapes of horror that swallow the listener completely. The keyboard/ sound-effects are very creepy and flow seamlessly in and out of focus. I must say that the second track "Sonorous Howl From Beyond the Stars" is one of the most gloriously nightmarish songs I have ever had heard as it easily captures extremely dark and suffocating mood Howard Phillip Lovecraft was so famed for. But not only Lovecraft and the works of his colleagues are the main source of inspiration for Tyranny: a certain dreamlike flow is always present in their music and dreams play a significant role in creating the atmosphere of utter hopelessness and desolation. If you enjoyed Tyranny and their mauling Lovecraftian doom I would also like to recommend Fungoid Stream and Catacombs.

"He saw processions of robed, hooded figures whose outlines were not human, and looked on endless leagues of desert lined with carved, sky-reaching monoliths. He saw towers and walls in nighted depths under the sea, and vortices of space where wisps of black mist floated before thin shimmerings of cold purple haze. And beyond all else he glimpsed an infinite gulf of darkness, where solid and semisolid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the worlds we know." - H. P Lovecraft "The Haunter of the Dark".

Ah, yes good old Lovecraft! One of the greatest sources of inspiration for metal, especially for Doom bands, as the slow and heavy approach of that genre fits the imagery of cosmic horror perfectly. But even in Doom Metal, there are many bands who fail to create the right atmosphere. Tyranny manage to do so. When listening to "Tides of Awakening", you can almost feel the haunting presence of otherworldly deities watching you, while you drown in some kind of trance-like state.

The music itself is nothing really innovative, Tyranny add nothing new to Funeral Doom. But even though it's nothing special, it's executed well. The guitars are heavily distorted, droning their way through the album, with some really good lead guitar work added here and there (especially the winding lead guitar on the first track is great). The drums are pounding and slow (like expected in the genre) with a quite unusual heavy usage of cymbals and toms. They almost sound like some tribal ritual drums, which may be the main reason behind the hypnotic character of this album. The vocals are delivered through incomprehensible growls that sound more like some weird sound effects rather than sounds produced by a human being. The keyboards are used to add some kind of echo effects and thankfully do not play lead parts. If there's a bass somewhere in the mix, it's completely inaudible, but that's not really important.

Many people may be distracted by this album because there's no progression in songwriting. The album consists of four lengthy tracks, that all sound more or less the same and flow into one another perfectly (when I first heard "Tides of Awakening, I couldn't tell when one song ended and the other began.), and a rather pointless ambient outro. This not an album you should buy if you like great songwriting. It's the atmosphere, which is delivered perfectly, that makes this a great release.

Now this is the shit. I had heard good things about Tyranny's previous MCD, but this is my first taste of their Funeral Doom wizardry. Tides Of Awakening is their debut album, and I hope there are many, many more albums from this weird Finnish duo.

You think you've heard crushing? You think you've heard slow? You haven't heard shit. These guys are obviously very into Thergothon with their arcane Lovecraftian lyrics, their unwieldy song titles, and the oceanic crush of their heaviness. If Cthulhu listened to metal, this would be the stuff. The proper songs on here range from a short length of 11:42 all the way to the monster 17 minutes of track 3, and they are all huge, monstrous Doom-behemoths with vast, tidal-wave riffs and deep-sea vocals that sound like the Old One himself is at the mike. I expected this to be more mournful, like Fallen or Pantheist, but this band makes Pantheist sound upbeat they are so bleak and pitiless. There is a wonderful aura of creeping malevolence that pervades this album, and I love that this is far more inimical than despairing. Dirge Doom might be a better term, as this isn't the sound of a funeral – it's the sound of the earth being fucking destroyed in slow motion.

Uncompromising and extreme, to be sure, and those without a taste for excruciatingly slow and oppressive music are urged to approach Tides Of Awakening with great caution. But if you love Thergothon as much as these guys obviously do, then snap this puppy up, because you will love it.

Originally written for www.metalcrypt.com

Legend tells that the term “funeral doom” was coined in a Red Stream Records catalog to describe the band Skepticism, which sounds plausible. Skepticism apparently derived much of their aesthetics from Thergothon, ergo Thergothon invented funeral doom. Makes sense, right?

And yet as near as I can figure, funeral doom didn't exist as a distinct subgenre (if it even does now) until after the turn of the millennium, although it's true that a motley assortment of older bands have been given the label retroactively, though inconsistently and with varying levels of plausibility – there doesn't seem to be any rational reason why Esoteric would obviously be a “funeral doom” band whereas Disembowelment would plainly be “death/doom” (just like My Dying Bride and Anathema?).

Platonism actually works in reverse, you see: reality is very ambiguous, but when a name is attached to some grouping of attributes, even arbitrary ones, they become a Thing with particular intrinsic characteristics. A Thing can be easily reproduced: what was once ineffable can be reduced to a few easily-replicated clichés.

Tyranny's among the newer generation of bands that are playing funeral doom on purpose, and they've got the style's grouping of attributes and particular intrinsic characteristics down pretty well cold. You know: deep growling vocals, backing keyboards, slow tempo and repetition, long songs, ambient outro. They sound more like funeral doom than Skepticism do, if you ask me, exemplifying what the style's all about, now that it is an official style, and all. Them and about a thousand other bands.

There are a hell of a lot of bands that sound more or less like this nowadays and at least half of them learned how to play an instrument the week before they released their first album – and even they get praised as total genius art! – I mean how hard is it to play two “evil” riffs over the course of fifteen minutes with some backing keys anyway – and so, jaded though I am, I must admit that when a competent band like Tyranny comes along it does make me want to kill myself and those around me slightly less. The production is good and the musicianship is quite reasonable, but who cares about that anyway. The interesting part is that it doesn't sound fake or forced or lazy, usually.

The first track is the best one on account of the slow, winding lead guitar. See everyone, that's how you do it: instead of trying to impress everybody by tossing in an accordion or some other stupidity, just let your instruments talk but have them speak in a very erudite fashion. It reminds a bit of Esoteric at points, but more in the manner of using the same good ideas as opposed to plagiarizing. The slow tempo and “depressive” (I do hate that word) conceptual themes and pipe organs and growling vocals and all the rest don't mean much to me by themselves: what makes this kind of music good, in general, is the flowing, layered sound and its deliberate evolution across the course of a song, and that is captured here quite well.

After that my interest declines, as in the following songs there's a bit less epic lead playing and a lot more dragging repetition, and I find myself thinking, “Well, this track's getting a bit dull but at least we're drawing to the end of it” only to look at the timer and see that we're but nine minutes into a sixteen-minute song. Albums like this set the standard for the current wave of funeral doom and leave bedroom band amateurs choking dust, but I'd rather that the bar were raised instead.

After a first MCD called Bleak Vistae, Finnish Doomsters Tyranny released their debut album Tides Of Awakening. This CD offer us really slow and massive Funeral Doom: The first four tracks are characterized by heavy guitars and drums playing at the pace of a funeral procession, completed by deep monolithic grunts that seem to originate from the most profound abyss. The production is nearly perfect for this kind of music. Amazing job...


It appears that Tyranny wants to show us how Funeral Doom should sound like. Longish song titles like In The Arcane Clasp Of Unwritten Hours or Coalescent Of The Inhumane Awareness may seem weird, but reflect well the extended length and the content of the tracks. Tides Of Awakening feels like an earthquake that would patiently, but efficiently, destroy everything on its way. Slowness has been redefined.


The fifth and last track can be considered an “outro”. Even if it lasts seven minutes, it is the shortest one on this album. It is some kind of noise/ambient song and not really relevant, and will even sound superfluous for some of you...


In short, Tides Of Awakening is an excellent album and an example of how Funeral Doom should sound like.

Originally written for http://www.adnihilum.co.nr