Tyranny
Tides Of Awakening

When it comes to Funeral Doom, the reactions of those who are at least somewhat familiar with the genres and sub-genres of Metal are generally polarized and irreconcilable: either you run as far away as possible from the bands that play it, horrified by the excruciating sense of desperation and pain they propose, or you cling obsessively to every note, taking it and distilling it in every smallest part.
The ultra-slow and catacombic tempos of this underground horde, which bands like Shape of Despair, Skepticism, Esoteric, and the like expertly master, lend themselves well to these exercises of inner anguish and unconscious "exploration," if one could say so without embarrassment. In general, those who play and devote themselves to this genre "lash" the listener with melodies at the limit of sonic paroxysm, contaminating them with heavy and unorthodox effects that only serve to exacerbate the already rarefied and painful atmosphere characteristic of Doom.

There are those who, in addition to the entire corollary of sonic torments mentioned so far, add a highly refined dose of avant-garde experimentation and achieve results that only a few trained ears can appreciate. For everyone else, the whole thing is reduced to an uninterrupted and unbearable cacophony, not even worth the honor of being thrown into the trash. And it's precisely from this base that one must start to fully comprehend the work of Tyranny: the fact that within their leaden vestiges, they encompass experimentation that has little to do with harrowing melodicity.

Finnish duet, about whom little is known, these figures seem to have been sent to Earth by some entity of the Lovecraftian pantheon, so great is the bitterness, ferocity, despair, the morbid and blinding darkness they bring.
Their album, the one we are discussing, dating back to 2005, is a work comprised, as is customary in this genre, of few songs (just 5) with an average duration of 15 minutes each, and which represent, one more than the other, a further step into the unknown Cosmic Horror. Here, there is not even a shadow of melodicity, even if sad, even if desperate. Or rather, to correct myself, not even the slightest gleam of it is seen: only ultra-dilated guitars, drums with beats numbering a hundred or so throughout the album, vocals that go beyond any "grunt" (as singing in Funeral Doom is called), but which is nothing more than an unending and disturbing roar, coming directly from someone among the unfathomable abysses of the Providence writer, their only, seemingly, main influence in songwriting.

Darkness beyond darkness, and nothing that can qualify the incredible piercing reflection that Tyranny seem to evoke note after note. Sound boulders that take weeks to get accustomed to, fragments of misanthropy hard to attribute any adjective to, let alone a name. And no song evokes even a remote hope. Nothing at all. Darkness, unfathomable abysses, and that's it.
Perhaps only with the interlude "Upon The War-torn Shape Of Cold Earth" does one feel a sensation of a moment releasing a weak and feeble concession to a sick light from the "dawn of the day of catastrophe." For the rest, only gloomy and inhumane wanderings in sonic swamps, and this is the beauty of this band, appreciated for the extreme non-commerciality of the sound. Indeed, the Tyranny, to the commercialization of a genre that is already not so, and in those few glimpses where it does prove to be so and could give such an idea, do not even allow breaks between one track and another.

Walking in a pitch swamp such as "Coalescent Of The Inhumane Awareness" or "Entreaties To The Primaeval Chaos," are distant echoes (but not too much) of a dark autumn that will never pass and that leaves no alternative to imagination that does not involve death, atrocity, and divine scourge. Especially the last track, more of a sonic experiment than a song where no instruments are traceable, but everything amalgamates in the samplings and the seething of a sick underground lake, gives a perception of the void and the inevitability of events, and perhaps it is precisely this that Tyranny aim with their sound-torture: to outline, in clear strokes and without any discrimination, the misery of man seen as an insignificant dot in the universe and subjugated to unknown and horrendous cosmogonies and forces, indifferent to the changing of things.

Enjoy listening. If you have the courage, that is.