Tiamat
Amanethes

Ah... the good times of "Wildhoney".
How I miss those songs that even today evoke so many dark and sulfurous sensations and emotions, those atmospheres so gloomy yet romantic and captivating. That decadent, depressive, and so damn successful album will never return. And I scream: unfortunately.

Today's Tiamat wants to return to those macabre and cemetery sounds, filled with strong doom and gothic elements combined with elaborate and thoughtful metal, but they can no longer succeed.
Many years have passed since that masterpiece and other great albums that have made Tiamat a reference point for this musical genre, like the successful "Clouds", but the decline was in the air already with the last unsuccessful albums. And the trajectory keeps going lower and lower.

"Amenethes", their new work, represents a gothic mess that is not successful at all, it represents a machine that has now jammed, it is the manifesto of a band that might have lost much of its class and visionary musical vision.

The sensation of boredom and repetitiveness dominates this album, as in "Equinox of the gods" or "Until the Hellhounds Sleep Again", the former certainly superior where we find small flashes of light, while the latter gives us the worst of Tiamat, revisiting in "Katarraktis Apo Aima", a truly, truly terrible track with sounds that do not reflect the group's true style.

To discard the trivial ballad that is "Misantropolis" or the first single "Lucienne", some sort of "hunting" track, designed to be a single and thus snag a few more fans.
Perhaps only "Via Dolorosa" can be saved, the only glimpse of the true Tiamat, those who knew how to move by creating sonic hallucinations so varied and real.

It might be the fascinating cover that perhaps kept this album still on my shelf... for the rest, much to discard and very little to save...

As always, when talking about bands of this level, we immediately miss the good old days, in this case, that seminal "Wildhoney" or even "A Deeper Kind Of Slumber", but getting to regret even "Prey" which I considered the lowest point of their discography...