Tiamat

If the 80s were also the years of metal (from classic to thrash, right up to the first stirrings of extreme metal) and of a post-punk that grew ever darker, and thus of gothic, the 90s were the decade in which these two strands finally found their definitive common ground, making it clear to everyone that a new genre, gothic metal, was emerging from the shadows. It's clear that a fundamental piece of this hybridization is represented by Type O Negative, particularly their stunning 1991 debut “Slow, Deep And Hard“, a milestone in which a predominant metal component is paired with atmospheres and a sense of decadence typical of the dark scene, elements that became ever more pronounced in later works, those being “Bloody Kisses” and “October Rust”, both of which can rightly be considered gothic metal.

A year earlier, in 1990, Fields Of The Nephilim released “Elizium“, another milestone that blended typically dark scenarios with pronounced psychedelic elements, drawn among others from Pink Floyd. It's likely that these were the two bands that set off the gothic deluge which, from the early 90s onward, flooded the metal scene with bands from every corner of the globe. From Portugal's Moonspell to Britain's Anathema, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, to the Dutch The Gathering and the Swedish Tiamat, the gothic metal wave was ready to take over the world.

Within this crowded and multifaceted context, Johan Edlund's Tiamat stand out in many respects as the cream of the crop, having joined the scene after starting out closer to black metal and, naturally, Swedish death metal. The band's journey toward gothic reaches its peak in 1994 with “Wildhoney”. Not only the undisputed pinnacle of the band's output, but also one of the crowning achievements of a gothic metal landscape that had by then reached full maturity.

Tiamat's greatness, in particular, lies in having transformed metal influences into something more, through the personality of singer Johan Edlund, a man capable of infusing his lyrics with a personal vision of life, death and religion, as well as turning his own strength and fragility into the vehicle for a deeply meaningful artistic vision. Alongside a dark lyrical world and Edlund's despairing vocals, “Wildhoney” certainly features the metal riffs typical of the Swedish scene, as well as a properly gothic array of keyboards, but what truly makes it special and hard to match is a variety of approaches, ranging from Floydian psychedelia to prog, from chamber music to ambient, always deployed in service of Edlund's expressive urgency.

So if Moonspell's “Wolfheart” and “Irreligiuous” represent the perfect synthesis of heavy metal and gothic-rock, Tiamat's “Wildhoney” already bends the newborn genre toward a more experimental variant.

In truth, for Tiamat, “Wildhoney” is less a destination than a fresh start. After the superb “Clouds” (Century Media, 1992) - an album already studded with gothic flourishes, yet one that effectively closed out a trilogy steeped in death and doom metal - Johan Edlund felt that path had reached a dead end, and that with that band he'd never be able to move in the directions his artistic instincts demanded he explore. The band's refoundation left only bassist Johnny Hagel standing alongside Edlund. Joining were Magnus Sahlgren on guitar, Lars Sköld on drums and Waldemar Sorychta on keyboards. It's perhaps the contribution of the latter - an invaluable experimenter with a fondness for atmospheric ambient music - that most shaped Tiamat's new direction: just listen to the two minutes of “25th Floor”, or that rain-soaked ambient sketch titled “Kaleidoscope”, to grasp the electronic apparatus the band took on board with his arrival.

Pleased with the results of “Wildhoney”, whose songwriting involved every member of the band, starting with the follow-up “A Deeper Kind Of Slumber” - for many, a work of equal stature - Johan Edlund would come to regard himself as the only stable member of Tiamat, increasingly rotating the rest of the lineup and shouldering almost entirely the role of author and composer.

Hitting play on “Wildhoney” is like opening a door onto a hidden world ready to enchant and stun its visitors, a kind of dark, baleful wardrobe into Narnia. Amid intense chirring and chirping, then mournful, antique-flavored keyboard tolls, the title-track intro seems to drag us into a thicket as murky as it is magical. It's into this scene that the album's first riff bursts in - a slow, unstoppable doom monolith that sets the pace for “Whatever That Hurts”, which, for its variety and imaginative power, could be considered the emblematic track of “Wildhoney”'s revolution. Edlund growls out visions indistinguishable from reality, singing as if from the heart of a psychotropic nightmare brought on by the most disparate substances, real or imagined, which he reels off in near-messianic cadence: Jimsonweed, Honey Tea, Psilocybe Larvae, Honeymoon, Silver Spoon, Psilocybe Tea... But the track isn't all raging guitar riffs and growls. The atmospheric interludes dominated by ethereal keyboards carry equal weight, and before surrendering to a web of death-metal solos, the guitars even indulge in Arabesque-inspired runs.

With no chance to catch our breath, the riff of “Whatever That Hurts” morphs into the sharper, more impetuous one of “The AR”, duly doubled by female choirs that lend it a hieratic force. In the usual atmospheric interludes we hear a black heart beating and funereal music-box chimes seemingly lifted from the Cocteau Twins' “Treasure” by the Cocteau Twins.

If up to this point the album has been dominated by an original crossbreed of death metal and gothic rock with a strong dreamlike dimension, after the “25th Floor” interlude Edlund's progressive and psychedelic inspirations and ambitions come into play, just as forcefully. The wondrous ode to Mother Nature titled “Gaia” draws freely from both Pink Floyd and Procol Harum. It opens with a fanfare of electric organ, reveals its metal heritage only in Edlund's epic vocals and Lars Sköld's shifting rhythms, before launching first into a Gilmour-esque solo and then into a piano flourish with a modern classical flavor. The long closing suite “A Pocket Size Sun” is likewise strongly shaped by Pink Floyd's psychedelia, with Edlund's now-tamed vocals meeting a female spoken word part.

While all the album's lyrics are by Edlund, the same can't be said for the compositions, which, though steered chiefly by the frontman, involved every member of the lineup in turn. A synergistic work process and a creativity that, at that point in the band's career, seemed boundless led to the creation of further masterpieces, all marked by the same unpredictability and staggering range of solutions.

In the ultra-electric “Visionaire”, for instance, Edlund plays the part of a malevolent god who uses the dark colors of night to hide from a humanity left to grope in the dark, while Magnus Sahlgren fires off solos like lightning bolts; “Do You Dream Of Me?”, essentially a dream-pop track, is instead split into two parts by an intricate web of Spanish-flavored guitars. In both cases, we're looking at a band capable not only of drawing on multiple musical languages and countless influences, but of making them coexist as a single, organic, new whole.

Recorded by Tiamat at Woodhouse Studio (where, among others, The Gathering, Moonspell and Italy's own Lacuna Coil also cut records) and released by Century Media on September 1, 1994, “Wildhoney” soon became one of the biggest bestsellers in the renowned German metal label's catalog, outselling even the excellent results of bands like Grave and Unleashed. A success owed in no small part to the sheer immediacy of an album that was inevitably received as a mysterious yet unmistakably unique and defining object, ready to open new doors for the metalheads of the era, but also to open the doors of gothic metal to listeners devoted to other shores entirely, be they dream-pop or psychedelic.

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20/08/2023