| Reviews for Therion - Symphony Masses: | |||||||||||
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New generation of death metal with symphonic and other influences, and if this kind of music is a genre, this album is surely the best in this genre. Here are genius melodies again (a bit better than on Beyond Sanctorum) and some experiments. Very recommended album, 10/10 without a doubt, one of the best albums ever. For me it is like ,,Storm of a light´s bane´´ for blackers. Cult. | Review by: icu I love this album. The feeling through the whole album. The black sombre tones and the mysterious keyboard sound makes Symphony Masses - Ho Drakon Ho Megas" the best death-metal album ever in my opinion. Review by: Hardeknud This is the kind of album that showed the boundaries of death metal weren't completely explored, as Therion had already partially shown on their previous death metal albums where they were one the unique few bands that combined death metal with keyboards. On the other hand this album showed that Therion had progressed out of the death metal stage where they had gotten the fame of being original within the boundaries of the genre, while still keeping a lot of the elements that were being heard on the previous effort. The style change has effected itself most notably on the lyrics theme. The story behind it was that during the black metal heydays of 1992 when the church-burnings in Norway were frontpage news and seemed to centre around Varg Vikernes, Therion as a swedish death metal act, weren't considered 'true' enough. If you look for example to the lyrics of the first full album, the lyrics centered around how government=shit and that in a deathmetal band! Eventually a girl, who apparently was trying to impress Varg Vikernes in who she had a love-interest, set Christofer Johnsson's (the main member of the band) house on fire, with the note nailed to his door that if he didn't improve his act 'the Count' would be back (in another version of the story she just scorched his door and nailed a Burzum-album to it). A lot can be said about this sequence of events, but one thing that can be said is that it improved the music! (note that Beyond Sanctorum was far from a bad album) Christofer Johnsson eventually moved to another country, and joined the Swiss magickal cult of 'Le Dragon Rouge'. The third album, Symphony Masses, deals with various occult rites and occult subjects, as reflected in the song-titles. The lyrics, albethey kinda hard to seperate per song as they're all written in one line without seperations, seem to be praise to various occult beings and Gods (Lilith, Baal), partially in Hebrew and Arameic as well. The music itself, could best be described as 'dark metal' (a genre I'd put Opera IX, Root and Master's Hammer in as well, and not simply because they all kick ass...or maybe because they do after all!). It's not death metal, not heavy metal, and not exactly a mix either. As said, this album takes a lot of elements from the previous album, and introduces a number of new elements, a lot of which return on the following albums. The best part of this album, in my opinion, is it's solidness in all possible ways. The song compositions are varied and original. Sometimes the ending of a song sounds totally different than the beginning, or even various parts of the same song differing almost completely, without really making non-sensical songstructures. In fact, the songs make perfectly good sense. Sometimes for example you'll hear the guitars play a chugging riff then going into tremolo-solo-mode and then doing a typically heavy metal melody. The guitarplay, with Christofer Johnsson being the guitar-wanker he occasionally is ;), is interesting and original, while being fitting to the music. The same could be said of the drumming, which I consider some of the better drumming in metal. Not because it's ear-shatteringly brilliant, but because it fits the music so perfectly while keeping it interesting. Another strong-point of the album is the audibleness of the bass. Occasionally the album had me stunned, because, unlike I'm used to, the bass was suddenly on the foreground doing a solo, after which it returned to play some unusual basslines! Christofer's vocals are a bit of gruff grunts, or a grunty scream. On some tracks he uses a really dark low voice which I assume to be a bit studip-enhanced. The best description I could give of his vocals overall is that it hangs halfway between his Beyond Sanctorum and Lepaca Kliffoth vocals (did that help? ;) One final note on the keyboards: the fact that this album has keyboards doesn't mean they dominate the sound. On the contrary, they are only used very sparingly, and on just the right occasions as well I might add. If they're not subtle on the background, they usually fill up a lull in the music or do a lead into a new part of a song. I hope I've piqued the reader's sufficiently enough to get him interested into the album, it certainly deserves being checked out. This is the kind of album that you'll like if you like anything symphonic, bombastic, and/or anything with a tad of occult atmosphere. Or if you liked any of the Therion albums basically. I can only imagine hardcore black metal fans being totally turned off by this (their interests being totally different), and death metal fans who mourn the demise of the Therion that did the first 2 albums, or think this effort is too soft. Ok maybe thrash die-hards wont be interested either. This album is interesting on basis of the sound alone (it has occasional nicely done sound-effects). Anyhow, if possible try to score the original release, not the Nuclear Blast re-release. In contrast with the re-releases of the first 2 albums, this one doesn't contain any bonus tracks, the original production *definitely* didn't need any remastering, and it would be a shame to have the excellent cover-art of a massive 'drakon' facing(?) a massive army of skeleton musicians. Not to mention the picture of a weird rite on the back of the booklet, and the fact that the re-releases don't have the lyrics. 96/100 Review by: Egregius Symphony Masses is one of therion's best records,and by far the best from their first era,it has it all, dark music(symphony drakonis),death metal(baal reginon),experimental(ritual dance),doom metal(dark princess naamah),heavy metal(black rose),thrash metal(powerdance), this variety of songs started the departure of a death metal related band into something else,as developed in the next albums lepaca and specially theli. 5/5 to me Review by: megaterio
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