•
Rating: There was a time when album covers more or less precisely suggested what you would be listening to once the needle was set on the black vinyl.
Despite owning this record for ages and ages, I have never adequately reflected on the depiction presented on the cover of the second baroque and neoromantic LP by Therion, marked as anno domini 1992.
It looks like an ugly cover and indeed it is, but by analyzing it rationally, one can notice that the massive and dark presence of grim clouds is threatened by the gushing sunlight, which seems almost hidden and minor, yet it appears to be able to overcome its surroundings.
As if to say: what you are about to listen to will be a classic black massacre but amidst all this darkness, there will be sudden, unexpected flashes of light, creativity, and hope.
For such a learned chromatic analysis, I realize that it takes quite a bit of imagination, or having guzzled down six jugs of Cannonau consecutively.
In my case, the former prevailed: Cannonau is not recommended for breakfast.
We are in the presence of a pure distillate of raw Viking sentimentality, even though the underground and lugubrious catacombic root is to be found in the well-regarded Switzerland of the good Thomas G. Warrior.
The Swedish-deathsters Therion before becoming a sub-branch of the Circo Medrano, always made people laugh yet at least played wildly and boorishly in an appropriate and convincing manner.
It is not known whether their comicality is voluntary or not: it was revealed to me in the Lower Pleistocene thanks to a snippet of a period interview in which they boasted of boiling in a special cauldron not the ancient Viking recipe of pork rinds with beans but the instrument strings before mounting and thoroughly abusing them in the recording studio.
Indeed, it just escapes me whether the slow-cooking of strings has become a consolidated practice among the deathsters of sunny Scandinavia and whether this influenced the scene and the final result, in any case, the track that kicks off the album, "Future Consciousness", where the array of blinding atrocities expressed literally splits the mountains near Stockholm in two: if you go look today, indeed, it's all flat land around there.
Not to mention (but yes, let's mention it) the troglodytic "Illusions of Life" filled with delightful UH! scattered grossly here and there.
That dripping tangle of Celtic ice mixed with tears, blood, and boiling black pitch remains indelible for anyone whose ears are occluded and lined with tungsten.
(Re)tasting records of this kind highlights, in case there was a need, the nearly absolute mediocrity and lack of perspective present today in the varied world of more or less extreme metal globally.
Translated from Swedish:
"Beyond Sanctorum" represents the peak, the acme, the summit, the pinnacle, the vertex, the zenith, the climax, as well as their compositional/executive apogee: nevertheless, one of the greatest examples of Metallo della Muerte from the end of the millennium originating from the ancient continent.
Immediately after this tortuous and voluptuous work, the vocalist and leader maximo mercilessly ousted his partners in misfortune with the tactical plan to cube quadruple the formation elements; this progressively compromised the quality of the proposal but at the same time allowed him to set up the multifaceted circus that has come down to our days.
UH!
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Future Consciousness (05:00)
Chaos within laughter of universe
Why is it a sin
To have the will to break out ?
Haunted by their Master
Their holy god, their king of kings
He says outbreaks are evil
To be chained into this lake of fire
No sanity exists
Open eyes and truths forbidden
All humans should obey
Heavens gates will never fetter up their souls
Breaking through the circle
The circle of god
Discover your own will
And break out
Rise to get high
Weakness to deny
Why submit
Be weak and crawl ?
Chaotic skies
Too unordered to fall
Lord of beyond
Lead me through the astral skies
02 Pandemonic Outbreak (04:21)
Chaos within Laughter of universe
Why is it a sin
To have the will to break out?
Haunted by their Master
Their holy god, their king of kings (He rules the world)
He says outbreaks are evil (Universe)
To be chained into this Lake of fire (Lake of fire)
No sanity exists (Get the ice broken)
Open eyes and truths forbidden (Will raise your mind)
All humans should obey (Time who have decayed)
Heavens gates will fetter up their souls (Now I'll gain it back)
Breaking through the circle
The circle of god
Discover your own will
And break out
Rise to get high
Weakness to deny
Why submit
Be weak and crawl?
Chaotic skies
Too unordered to fall
Lord of beyond
lead me through the astral skies
03 Cthulhu (06:12)
Damnation my insane
No pain shall got to high
Only choose the pace
One shalt arches dies
Bering the doings unto get outs
It's killed in screeds, wrath hunting breathe
It's coming hurt you rot death
Cthulhu:
"My thoughts cry in this pit
I breed sorrows my thoughts for you"
Common in space ness don't used soaring the pate
We live in amber's tide
Killing in shred light
Evil cold the light
One dead hollow tied
No life coming will rise
Bering the doings unto gets on
Feel death, passed the life, ritual turn it at sown
Love in hate, brood shedding tear
Damnation my insane
No pain shall got to high
Only choose the pace
One shalt arches dies
Bering the doings unto get out
Come times us come
Deem us come true
We again (shall rules)
04 Symphony of the Dead (06:49)
Your life is fading to death
When gates are open, you'll pass
You are alone outside your shell
The astral landscapes await
A discovery of the secrets of life
You'll reach through the skies
Your eyes can see a world in beyond
The world of the demised
(This song has also an instrumental version)
05 Beyond Sanctorum (02:36)
A mystery very old
Is the curiosity of mankind
An endless searching for the bricks of life
But only death is the one who can tell
I seek beyond death
In the light of the astral skies
My third eye can see
The reason why I'll gage my life
07 Illusions of Life (03:20)
Passing through a life in eternal misery
You are denying
Why you can't see, this life is your enemy
Set your soul free through eternity
Now is the question, is this a lie
Never stop asking for reasons why
Why you can't see, this life is your enemy
Set your soul free through eternity
The will is the key
To fight your destiny
Your soul should be free
Through eternity
The sanity can open up your mind
Your soul would rise to never ever more to fall
09 Paths (02:03)
I was not prepared to die
Still dead but feels alive
I lost my self
But now I feel that I am dead
I feel so weak
Left in shadows
My life has passed
Oh please, let me fade (away) ...
10 Tyrants of the Damned (03:43)
Dark age, war
Tyrants
Veils of death
Tyrants of the damned
No meaning we saw
Believers of war
They had thirsts of gore
A third reich
Built by bricks of hate
Soon to fall
Just like their fates
Lunacy
Distortions of their minds
Sick believes
To raise the arian race
Thoughts of hate
A nazi mode of thoughts
The scums are dead
And we don't see their reich
No meaning we saw
With this big war
A power of hate
That mankind creates
Loading comments slowly
