TIAMAT - Commandments: An Anthology (2024 Reissue) - 2LP - Gatefold 180g Red Vinyl [APR 19]

2LP - Limited Edition 180g Red Vinyl housed in a Gatefold Sleeve. 

Just like many other Scandinavian bands that rose to fame in the nineties Tiamat has gone through important stylistic changes in its impressive career. The band around singer and guitarist Johan Edlund who also plays keyboards and theremin on some occasions, has evolved from a sinister doom metal band with dominant death metal infuences into a gothic rock act firting with extremes like pop music but also its own extreme metal roots.

Releasing a compilation of the band's frst decade and a half of activities in chronological order makes sense in such a context as it helps us follow and understand the development of the Swedish quartet. The release starts with the raw ''Where the Serpents Ever Dwell'' that comes around with miserable and creeping doom metal riffs meeting raw and terrifying vocals.

The track is taken from the band's ambitious conceptual debut record Sumerian Cry when Johan Edlund still called himself Hellslaughter. As soon as the group's third album gets covered by this compilation, the already imaginative music gets a more melodic and mysterious touch such as in the wonderful "A Caress of Stars" taken from the underrated Clouds record that is often overlooked between the doom metal milestone The Astral Sleep and the popular gothic metal record Wildhoney that helped shaping this new genre of music. The latter release included at times cinematic, epic and progressive elements such as in the imaginative ''Gaia'' that requests multiple spins to unfold.

Later in its career, Tiamat's sound became simpler and mellower. The surprisingly uplifting ''Vote for Love'' from the Judas Christ record is a track that jumped on
the bandwagon of the success of numerous commercially successful gothic rock acts like HIM. The bittersweet melancholically melodic ''Cain'' from the band's Prey record became a career highlight that defnes Tiamat just as much as the Wildhoney era and its hits.

Commandments is a release filled with sixteen imaginative, diversifed and atmospheric songs shifting from gloomy doom metal with death metal grunts over progressive gothic metal with female backing vocals to short and sweet gothic rock songs with a strong commercial appeal. Some new material would have been great for fans of old date but the running time of eighty minutes is very generous and offers value for money nonetheless. Commandments is an excellent way to understand everything Tiamat is about and honours the still underrated Swedish gothic metal pioneers appropriately.

This album comes out in deluxe gatefold edition on double Red vinyl limited to 500.

Tracklist: 

A1. Where The Serpents Ever Dwell
A2. On Golden Wings
A3. Ancient Entity
A4. The Sleeping Beauty

B1. A Caress Of Stars
B2. Whatever That Hurts
B3. Gaia
B4. Cold Seed

C1. Phantasma De Luxe
C2. Brighter Than The Sun
C3. As Long As You Are Mine
C4. The Return Of The Son Of Nothing

D1. Vote For Love
D2. Cain
D3. Wings Of Heaven
D4. Divided (Edit)