Tiamat
Wildhoney

THE REVIEW

Tiamat is a group that is difficult to categorize for any fan of extreme music: born in the late '80s in the cold Swedish lands, they began their artistic journey, like many other bands from their homeland, with death metal, experimenting with different sounds in each album. The best work in this sense is undoubtedly "Wildhoney", released in 1994, and regarded by many as the band's best work.

In this work, the group offers a very varied gothic metal, sometimes sunny, sometimes dark and claustrophobic, always and nevertheless very evocative. It's curious how they chose to connect each track with the next: we can see the work as a single majestic suite, in which every "movement" becomes indispensable for the overall structure of the work. The only flaw might be the high number of instrumental tracks (4 out of 10 songs), which makes the work a bit too short in the end.

The album opens with the title track, a 53-second mini-instrumental, which introduces us, amidst chirping birds and cricket sounds, to the beautiful "Whatever That Hurts", a majestic gothic/doom piece, where the growled chorus dominated by guitars is contrasted by verses with whispered vocals in a psychedelic and dark atmosphere (it reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"). The lyrics (like all the others) are both hermetic and poetic: "Cobweb sticks to molten years/ Cockroaches served with cream/ I wipe the silver bullet tears/ And with every tear a dream". "The AR" develops along the same lines as the previous song, adding female choirs and an extra dose of despair. The central break, played only by guitar over a background of electronic noises, is beautiful. "25th Floor" is a very unsettling instrumental that leads into "Gaia", another gem of the album: over a pompous background dominated by keyboards and choirs, the singer and guitarist Johan Edlund (author of almost all the songs and lyrics) recites a poem dedicated to Nature, in all its beauty. The piano solo, followed by the guitar solo, only serves to make the atmosphere of the piece more solemn. "Visionaire" is another excellent piece, but it is a less inspired track than those preceding it. Another brief instrumental, "Kaleidoscope", introduces us to "Do You Dream of Me?", a very heartfelt acoustic ballad that resolves in a long guitar solo. The longest instrumental is "Planets", almost an ambient music track, thanks to its relaxed and keyboard-rich atmosphere. It closes with the long (8-minute) and sunny "A Pocket Size Sun", featuring a duet between Johan Edlund and Birgit Zacher. Putting aside the desperate atmospheres of the earlier tracks, this piece cradles us with its soothing, almost lullaby-like melody. The last few minutes alternate between more relaxed and more lively moments, with the most significant contribution coming from the drums.

A beautiful and very peculiar album, despite the more than 10 years since its release.

SCORE = 8