After 5 years they are back! 100% Tiamat is stated on the logo of the Limited edition cover of the new project by Tiamat “Amanethes”. Another marketing trick or the truth? I hold my reservations. In the first song “The Temple of the Crescent Moon” this statement is made by the band itself: “It’s been a long time but we are here again / It’s been five long years of thunder, lightning and rain…”. Truly, Tiamat are back for good after 5 years of deafening silence.

I am watching the band since its first LP “Summerian Cry” and what had always impressed me were the continuous sound transformations, always under a cloth of darkness and sorrow. Thus Tiamat of 2008 are merging the best elements of their almost 20year path from black to gothic metal and from doom to atmospheric, progressive and psychedelic.

The main feature of the new project by Tiamat is the diversity of the songs with an obvious mood for a mild return to their early brutal forms. Their mastermind Edlund brings back after a lot of years the raw vocals in some songs reminding us something of the “Astral Sleep” and “Clouds” periods while at the same time for the first time tests some new sounds. Also, the guitars are sharp and the rhythms are more intense in some parts compared to the early past.

Consequently, we would have to say that “Amanethes” is an epitome of the Tiamat sound as it matches their best elements using some of the rawness of “Astral Sleep”, the addictive darkness of “Clouds”, the psychedelic mood of “Wildhoney”, the claustrophobic atmosphere of “A Deeper Kind of Slumber” and the gothic sound spectrum of “Skeleton Skeletron”. What is the result of this sonic merger? Tiamat of the year 2008, a group that resects its past while at the same time is not trapped in it but with fresh ideas is moving to an auspicious future. The sound acrobatics from the almost black “Equinox of the Gods” and “Raining Dead Angels” to the doom-gothic “Will they Come?” and “Lucienne” and from there to the psychedelic-atmospheric “Misantropolis”, “Amanitis”, “Meliae” are samples of a complex and multitalented musician such as Johan Edlund.

The pain, darkness and the seductive melancholy have acquired for this year their sound depiction listening to name… “Amanethes”.