Tiamat
Sumerian Cry

I'm sluggish, I have no exciting new things on hand, the Diaframma have robbed me twice, and so, on a whim, for fun, out of curiosity, I throw myself into one of those reviews to write on autopilot, one of those you can write blindfolded and with one hand tied behind your back, without even replaying the CD. Let's skim through the database in search of interesting gaps. Here we go, let's talk a bit about Tiamat, let's talk about their debut album “Sumerian Cry”.

Needless premise: we all know works like “Clouds”, “Wildhoney”, “A Deeper Kind of Slumber” and certainly we do not question the absolutely significant role the band played in the evolution of gothic metal two decades ago. But even if Mr. Johan Edlund's artistic trajectory has slowly come to its end (from “Skeleton Skeletron” onwards, he seems to have lost his magic wand indeed), even if today no one cares about Tiamat anymore, even if their invention has aged poorly and surely the intuition of blending extreme metal, gothic atmospheres, and psychedelia pales in front of the sharp eyes of the metalheads of the 2010s, even if today we are all more post and less depressive, in the end, it's worth saying a few words about the debut of one of the greatest and most original metal bands of the nineties.

“Sumerian Cry”, as previously mentioned, is the first work of the Scandinavian band, and perhaps it's more sensible now than fifteen years ago, when the band was churning out masterpieces, always diverse and sublime works, a band (or rather, a musician) that benefited from a creative/evolutionary push that few others of his contemporaries could count on. Fifteen years ago, rediscovering Tiamat's first work was a painful act of devotion by the most completist fan; today, approaching “Sumerian Cry” means performing, with professional disillusionment, an archaeological dig that can lead us at best to a good death metal album, certainly raw, but not without salient points of interest.

Sure, “Sumerian Cry” isn't “In the Sign of Evil” by Sodom, but it's not far off if one approaches the listening with the naive temptation of savoring, albeit in an embryonic state, those Tiamat who would soon become one of the most sparkling gems of the gothic/doom panorama: a path indeed initiated by the indispensable Paradise Lost, but elevated to excelling levels by Tiamat, pushed beyond unseen horizons by many other bands born in the name of extreme sounds.

But it's no secret, when they formed (1989), Tiamat played a rough death metal of typically Swedish mark, inspired by the fathers of the nation Entombed (or rather Nihilist!) and influenced by the then-boiling scene (with Unleashed cousins in the forefront), a scene of which Johan Edlund (already active with the formidable Treblinka) was a worthy example: a death metal still imbued with the uncontrolled fury inherited from the thrash of the eighties, not exempt from the sonic decay of various Carcass and Asphyx, yet already filled with the darkness and heaviness that would characterize the mature course of the Swedish combo.

But let's get back to us: “Sumerian Cry” was recorded in 1989 and released the following year, and at the time the newly formed Tiamat were a duo, Johan Edlund (vocals and guitar) and Jorgen Thullberg (bass). These shady figures, besides playing super angry stuff, loved giving themselves horrendous names (Hellslaughter and Juck) and flaunting a baroque look that today we might almost define as black metal (face-painting, tank top, ammo belt around the waist, and spiked bracelets on the forearm, all portrayed in strictly black and white photographs). For the sake of completeness, I should add that the formation was completed by Emetic (guitar) and Najse (drums) as session members, but obviously, our attention must be directed towards Hellslaughter, aka Johan Edlund, the mastermind of the project, as well as the only constant element in the continuous reshaping of the formation over the years, the fundamental man to whom we must necessarily associate the entity Tiamat, Sumerian deity, and “Sumerian Cry”, coincidentally, is nothing more than the extrinsic expression, both lyric and musical, of the youthful fury of a young man who loved combining fantastic themes, the cult of the proverbial Satan into brutal but at times also slow and oppressive music, even stained with seventies references, in line with what was preached in those years by the monumental Cathedral.

The production is poor but powerful and effective, the guys handle their instruments in a scholastic way, but anyway Tiamat were never great musicians, as their strength remains and will stay tied, for better or worse, to the visionary nature of its leader and his undeniable ability to create atmosphere. And no matter how hard, the Sumerian Cry carries a certain atmosphere, gloomy as you will, but it's undeniable that even then a metaphysical wind was blowing over the notes harshly scraped by Edlund's clumsy fingers. It's no coincidence the album starts with the sign of arpeggiated guitars and majestic keyboards, so much that the intro “Sumerian Cry -part 1” made me back then well disposed towards listening. But it was only the impression of an instant, “In The Shrine of the Kingly Dead” is a punch in the gums that is not easily forgotten: viscous guitars, a powerful hit of muddy metal, then the drums stop, a sandpapering riff starts (very much in the style of Entombed, just to stay on topic) soon joined by galloping rhythms leading to the very intense chorus sung even with a double voice, growl, and whispering. Ah yes, Edlund's voice: his infernal wheeze does not differ much from a teenage growl, hoarse yet exhausted, mixed with an eerie whisper, in which however purists will find the peculiar timbre of the Swedish musician. The guitar sizzles, the bass booms, the cymbals clink, and here comes the resumption of the drum assault: it is “The Malicious Paradise”, very fast second track, so much so that Tiamat's death metal is so dark that at times it is shrouded in black metal fumes (but let's remember it's 1990, when black metal as we know it today – croaky voice, buzzing guitars, botched production – had not yet been properly codified, and thus it's rather logical to trace the sound of our guys to that obscure blend that was the extreme metal of those years, a fundamentally evil death metal blabbering about the Occult themes, so much so that the result doesn't stray far from the “Soulside Journey” of those Darkthrone who incidentally will indeed play black metal for real).

The musicians, we said, surely did not come from a conservatory (for example, the guitar solo parts could be mercifully covered with a veil, even if they don't gain much room in the economy of the whole anyway), but the album as a whole has a great pace, alternating decidedly violent parts with evocative slowdowns of doom matrix. But purists, with protractors and compasses in hand, will be able to pick out, between the grooves of this still derivative and too little personal sound, some tasty peculiarities of the sound of future Tiamat: “Necrophagios Shadows” (note the hilarious childishness of the titles) is dominated by powerful medium tempos (it's inevitable to think of the Cathedral of “Soul Sacrifice” which dictated the law in the field), where among other things (magnifying glass in hand) three-quarters of the piece we encounter the typical riff of Edlund that we will find in different variations in many of his subsequent episodes (the main theme of the phenomenal “The Ar” - from “Wildhoney” - for example); in “Nocturnal Funeral” even indecent classical guitar strumming stands out from the chaos (nothing compared to the magical electro-acoustic intertwinings we will hear in the future); in the second half of “Evilized” we finally witness an unsuccessful attempt to insert blues parts in an extreme context (complete with a xylophone and out-of-tune guitar), already revealing a shy yet blurred desire to experiment. Far more significant, however, are the decadent atmospheres that pervade the last overwhelming piece (masterpiece of the album) “Where the Serpents Ever Dwell”, finally fully absolutely doom, finally able to evoke what will later bloom in the subsequent “The Astral Sleep”, with all its ingenuities, and “Clouds”.

Let's leave with a mystery: the track-list shows eleven tracks, but my CD only lists ten. I think the outro “Sumerian Cry – part 2” is missing unless we're talking about the majestic oriental tail of the aforementioned “Where the Serpents Ever Dwell” (yes, it's certainly that one). But in compensation, the bootleg version of the CD in my possession offers me a nice additional track in the form of a bonus track, a “The Sign of the Pentagram” with great pomp that, except for the killer riff placed at its opening, already bears the clear mark of the upcoming Tiamat, especially in the ungracious choirs dominating the refrain and the more imaginative use of Edlund's voice, less growly and more oriented towards the shores of an evocative and spat-out theatricality.

Damn the snow!, but when the hell will I receive the CDs I ordered????