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Rating: Paraphrasing the text of the opener "The Temple Of The Crescent Moon", five years have passed since the previous work of the Swedish band Tiamat and they have been years of "thunder, lightning and rain", in which they took a nice break, released a celebratory DVD ("Church of Tiamat") complete with live performance and a best-of ("Commandments"), thus closing the long recording chapter with the German Century Media, which first spotted their talent, guiding the band away from their primal death shores to the modern gothic rock/metal of "Prey", finally settling in the arms of the powerful Nuclear Blast.
Well, was it worth waiting so long for this new release? According to the German label, it certainly was, not to mention Johan Edlund’s perspective.
After an attentive and repeated listening of "Amanethes", the question that naturally arises is: is this it? Is this really the maximum effort by our Swedes to delight their fans after all this time? Did the mountain really give birth to this mouse?
Now I don’t wish to seem pitiless, but this new album, long-awaited and desired, is truly a disconcerting disappointment.
That the band has never been loyal to a single line/musical trend is well-established, as is their great ability to transform ethereal (quite psychedelic, indeed) and dreamy songs into deep nightmares of solid gothic metal. But this is where the problems of "Amanethes" arise: all the proposed tracks seem to lack a common denominator and certainly, the track list composition doesn’t help in finding a logical thread that unites all the musical components of the varied and colorful world residing in the mind of the main composer, that is, Edlund himself.
The impression from the first listen is that of witnessing the creation of a compendium of ideas randomly put together and recorded (superbly, as usual from Tiamat) as a sort of test, so as not to leave them forgotten in some remote corner of memory.
And to think, the start suggested a truly sumptuous album, almost a return to the past (vaguely with a black taste as in "The Astral Sleep") thanks to decidedly sharp guitars, double kicks, sporadic blast beats interspersed with wonderful gothic melodies and modern dark vibes: "The Temple Of The Crescent Moon" and "Equinox Of The Gods" definitely justify the purchase of the record in question, but one must admit that from the third track onward, for a total of 12 more songs, excluding only "Lucienne" (quite catchy in the chorus and pleasant overall), "Raining Dead Angel" (barely sufficient) and the final "Amanes" (quite dark and oppressive, yet well-crafted thanks to its wise alternation between acoustic intimacy and spectral doom power), all the rest presents itself as a kaleidoscope of pretentious pseudo rock/country banalities, pseudo Pink Floyd, pseudo folk, pseudo songwriter tunes.
The peak of negativity is reached with the dismal rock ballad "Will They Come" (embarrassingly vocal interpretation), the Portishead oriented "Summertime Is Gone" (truly boring) and the country/folk "Maliae" (horribly insipid and predictable).
The remaining tracks not mentioned do not possess significant noteworthy elements, they pass unnoticed as fillers, dulling the unwary listener, but at least they do not leave that bitter taste of disappointment and discontent that unfortunately often surfaces during the listening session of this truly weak "Amanethes".
The worst chapter in Tiamat's history: the beginning of the End?
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 Equinox of the Gods (04:34)
Listen to the angel sing
I can hear her crying
I can see her burning wing
In a burning church of shame
A bloody Mary in flames
Spoken infernal names
Rise from the ashes and do it again
Yeah, we can make it happen
My Nemesis, my friend
Why don't you stop to pretend
It's the beginning not the bitter end, no
Through the Genesis flood
We were baptized in blood
A military coup of the new God's
Rise from the ashes and do it again
Yeah, we can make it happen
This is the Equinox of the Gods
This is the Equinox of the Gods
Set the altar on fire
See the embers go higher
See the burning oils glowing
Sacrificial blood's flowing
We never bow unto thee
We went to Gethsemane
To kill your self-pitying Nazarene
Now all the cherubs are deceased
Upon their corpses we feast
The only good priest is a dead priest!
Rise from the ashes and do it again
Yeah, we can make it happen
We can make it happen
This is the Equinox of the Gods
This is the Equinox of the Gods
(Crucify her upsidedown
Impale her with rusty nails
Dress her up in a blood red gown
And gory, beautifully painted veil
Let her bleed to death before our eyes
Oh ooh
May she be punished and sacrificed
Oh ooh, oh yeah!)
The dirty nuns are in chains
No monasteries remain
The time has come for our Master to reign
Again
Thy kingdom is gone
Satan's work is done
And A-Bomb over Babylon
Rise from the ashes and do it again
Yeah, we can make it happen
This is the Equinox of the Gods
This is the Equinox of the Gods
This is the Equinox of the Gods
This is the Equinox of the Gods
Set the altar on fire
See the embers go higher
See the burning oils glowing
Sacrificial blood's flowing
Listen to the angel sing
I can hear her crying
I can see her burning wing
I can hear her dying
07 Katarraktis apo aima (02:42)
One, two, three, four...
Sons and daughters
Troubled waters
A stench of burned gasoline
Silicon and Codeine
Flooded highlands in misty haza
Mudslides and suicides
Earthquakes and gamma rays
Devilish acts of God above
Carried to heaven by a dirty white dove
And in the corner there's a broken man
His fingers are on the trigger now
And as the smell of dying embers
And rusty strings on his bow
A sound explodes and fills the room
And echoes beyond these walls of doom
Until it vanishes up in the air
With nothing more to come
Yeah, we must aim for the stars and we are gonna get up high
We must build another tower and make it though the fires
We must sail the seven seas now the water abound
We shall cease the deceased until the angels come around
With noting more to come...
13 Circles (03:48)
And now that we're dead
We've learned how to live
Our failures taught us how to forgive
And now that we've rise from the ashes of me and you
All our dreams shall come true
Floating in circles
Stars shall light our way
To meadows and fields, green as the grass
Where we lay down
Forever...
And now that we're clean
Our souls can be free
Our love is the only drug we need
And now that we're one
We don't need any God
Divinity flows in our blood
Floating in circles
Stars shall light our way
To meadows and fields, green as the grass
Where we lay down
Forever...
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Other reviews
By Matt7
The decadent, depressive, and so damn successful album will never return. And I scream: unfortunately.
Amenethes represents a gothic mess that is not successful at all, a machine that has now jammed.
By darkHaem
If I had to define the new work of Tiamat with a single adjective, I would simply say that it is an extremely romantic work.
Johan Edlund’s new voice ... makes it clear that the years ... have not led to a gradual degradation but to a new and stratospheric originality.
