Metal Reviews

Supposed to be out this week .Ive listened to 3 songs from it and....well its not the Therion i used to know i love. Its pretty mellow and seems to be much more commercially oriented. Its not the fact the the lyrics are in french and that i am french its just...sort of disappointing and weird.

Now i can't get the full picture with the 3 songs i listened on Youtube but they are all in the same mold so i guess its safe to say the album is similar. We are far from Sirius & Lemuria , Gothic Kabbalah ect here....

Hm...that's a shame

Their last effort was a huge disappointment for me. I'm not going to even bother checking the new songs out. Therion is dead. Long live Therion!

Im actually liking it so far. Only listened to about 5 songs and Ive really liked all 5. It sounds wayyyyy better than Sitra Ahra. And who cares if its different from Lemuria/Sirius B. Those albums were way different than early Therion.. The band just seems to change every few years.

Hardly a metal album (it is though). The fact it is sung in French is pretty painful to my ears, even though words are carefully pronounced most of the time (good), but the lyrics are... everything I hate. They deal with love, romance, passion, seduction, sadness... Well, Charles Baudelaire's favourite thematics. There are a lot of references to French culture, and the album is entirely made of covers. Okay....

A peculiar album... not bad, but definitely weird. I'll try to squeeze in the review tomorrow if I can.

Think I'll pass by the sounds of it, but I will wait for you review before final judgement. Therion losing it now doesn't really bother me that much, after so many good albums in the past it is ok for them to lose it completely.

I actually like the album, but that's probably because I'm French and I already knew most of the original songs. Pretty good covers (some very good ones), weird Therion album, even for late Therion.

I guess an album of covers either means

1) They have lost all creative inspiration and need the cash
2) They are taking a needed break from songwriting and plan to return to form on their next album


I wonder if somehow a woman is involved in all of this?

It's an art project Christofer Johnson wanted to do. After this they are making a rock opera project then go back to regular albums. They aren't hard up for money or anything, it is just something he wanted to do. The album is pretty good, but it's not metal.

The artwork on the album cover says it all ( Very Arty) mind you there is nothing wrong with trying something new, you may even add to your fan base.

It's not the best album for a nocturnal drive on the highway either. I thought playing the new album would provide me some blasting metal to keep me awake while driving back from the work, but it turns out to be more an album which requires you to sit down with a cup of tea or wine and enjoy it.
After a few listen's to the album, I'm still in doubt... I like it in a weird way, but I miss up-tempo songs.

The bands death metal stuff is great, and their operatic stuff isn't too bad Theli being their peak and I even liked the first disc of Gothic Kabbalah. Not too sure about anything else though, I doubt it could be as horrible as the newest Gayowar.

LONG TIME lurker, first time poster - i really wanted to join this discussion.

you'll probably find a shameless fanboy in me, but i dont understand people who start threads just to throw some shit on a random band, for no real purpose apparently.

facts first: last album, sitra ahra, was a huge success, both commercially (in these hard times) & as far as therion's core fanbase believes - check their forum, i've been reading it for years.
facts, again: the album itself is very inspired with all the typical Therion elements, huge choirs, huge orchestra, plenty of metal, despite a stylistic choice that was deliberately avoiding excessive saturation of their guitar sound. it turned out a masterpiece.
somebody might have read the wrong reviews or jerky opinions, without really listening to the album, i assume.


impressions second - i actually got the new cd, fresh of print since sales had only just started a few days ago, and spinned it 4 times.
it is the same therion music that is delivered each time, despite the project is something particular.
entirely sung in french, there is the usual set of male & female voices + choirs. there is the usual orchestra, and all the elements are as good as thay are in sitra ahra - this means guitars (that are very present and even aggressive at times) dont cover it all.
great maturity. if not compositional (the songs are covers), then in terms of arrangements.
it really is a great album even if it's not a standard one, just similar to the 2 non-regular albums they did in the past.


i remember when atrocity decided to cover pop from the eighties: they were lauded as the most creative act of all times & similar shit by the press worldwide. so the other bands are not allowed to try out something like this? please, dont make me cry.

the vision of those who live in order to throw shit at random directions is always crippled by their own prejudice.

Oh cool, a Therion fanboy. Welcome.

Going to listen to this now so I can pick apart that post.

Aaaaaand.....new guy never posts again.

New record!

Yeah he just came to bitch about the bitching

Well i wasnt even really bitching in the first place. I just said the album was different and that i , personally , was sort of disappointed by it because i found it a bit weird and not in the same mold as some of their previous efforts. Than that dude went nuts as if he was Therion agent or something

Trust me the day i will really be bitching about an album you will know it

EDIT: sorry, I was confused about what was said above and wrote something in reference to it......anyway ignore this.....

I was disappointed by Sitra Ahra (and that's not because they went "softer" according to some, as I really digged Gothic Kabbalah), but something got lost in the way that I can't still quite put a finger on... Might be because of the lineup change, but a big part of it felt uninspired to me, or even totally haphazard at worst (Land of Canaan). I'm a bit of a Therion fanboy as well, but not ashamed in the least to say The Great Mass got a lot more plays from me than Sitra Ahra in 2011.

That said, I was not expecting news from Therion for a while so I found out about this album just last week after somebody on a local metal forum posted the clip of Poupée de cire, poupée de son (really great cover, except I got it stuck in my head for the better part of the week ) Initials B.B. is also weirdly awesome.

From what I've listened from it so far it almost seems more cohesive than Sitra Ahra (the new line-up starting to gel maybe?), so it rekindled my hope a bit for the next album The reactions have been all over the place, with many people thinking it's a "real" album, so glad it was reviewed as an EP here. It's not really the first time Therion pulls that out, A'arab Zaraq - Lucid Dreaming in 1997 was kinda similar