Tiamat
Prey

THE REVIEW

2003, a Swedish band, whose constant is Johan Edlund, releases their artistic resurrection in the form of yet another stylistic transformation.

Tiamat began with the name Treblinka (the name of a Nazi extermination camp) playing Black Metal. A few years later, they changed their name to Tiamat (Sumerian deity of chaos) and went through a Death phase, then Doom/Death Metal. They shocked their fans with "Wildhoney", a true peak or trough as one might deduce from the many reviews available. The genre became Gothic Metal, then mellowed into a Rock increasingly tending toward Pop, much like the fate of Paradise Lost. Personally, I consider "Wildhoney" the band's milestone, as well as of the genre. For the rest, there's emptiness around this band that had done nothing else significant.

In 2003, ‘Prey’ is released, and out of nowhere comes the best fusion between music and love ever realized. Musically speaking, it is Gothic Rock with very light electronic influences. But it's a series of love poems of rare beauty accompanied by a dark, warm, and enveloping voice. There's not great technique in the choice of riffs and keyboards, but a lot of passion, and at times it feels like being warmed by an invisible, impalpable, but extremely penetrating presence... "Cain" introduces with a chirping and a gentle arpeggio into this world of shadows and presences. Despite the abyss from ‘Wildhoney’, there's a clear intention to evoke the same atmosphere of the intro from 10 years earlier. Whether commercial, stylistic, or coincidental, the effectiveness is there, as is the transport through the keyboard chimes, the riffs far from metal but still massive and present, the insistent bass lines... "Cain" ends with "Ten thousand Tentacles", the second track. The transport materializes into tactile sensations alone, never images, only darkness. "Wings Of Heaven" is another example of love played and realized through words emphasized by Edlund's expressiveness: The wings of heaven are descending/The touch of her naked skin's amending/The skies will collide/Only for a little while/And it will take us through the night. <