Band:	Lethe
Album:	When Dreams Become Nightmares
Style:	Electronic, Avantgarde metal
Release date:	January 17, 2014
A review by:	Ivor

01. In Motion
02. Haunted
03. Come Look At The Darkness With Me
04. Ad Librum
05. Love Pass Filter
06. Oblivion
07. You
08. Transparent
09. No Reason
10. When Dreams Become Nightmares

Here's another of those albums that belong here by association rather than the immediate content. Although, in this particular case you can never really tell, which is the primary reason. But first, tell me, how many of you have listened to Eluveitie's "A Rose for Epona" and thought "why wouldn't they just let Anna Murphy handle all the vocals?" She's got such a stellar voice that isn't used to her full potential, and it's just a shame really. Here's an album that solves that particular problem of the equation.

When Dreams Become Nightmare is an album with a deeply disturbing imagery and sound, which might explain why it's been released on Debemur Morti Productions. It is extreme in the sense that it doesn't follow any rules. There are no limits, no boundaries, it's an experiment at creating a mood that is an attempt at a bleak, oppressive and haunting state of mind that could be associated with dark corners of human psyche, that of nightmares, paranoia, mental breakdown and insanity.

It happens to be a success of no small degree. It is mostly slower tempo experimental music, blending together dark synth and piano atmosphere, a lot of electronic samples and noises, distorted guitars, and the haunting, often ghostly and wailing vocals of Anna Murphy. But it's far from being just a mess. There's a direction and an underlying sense of purpose to this musical chaos making this album flow really well.

Parallels can be drawn to the later, crazy-era of The 3rd And The Mortal, when the band started doing musical experiments that sounded just plain out there. Lethe carries similarities to The 3rd And The Mortal in its music as well as the vocal lines. There's also a touch of Souvenirs and Black Light District by The Gathering present. However, in its depressive bleakness it reminds me of something you probably wouldn't know and which is totally unlike the album at hand other than the oppressive feeling and the lyrical topic: Antonius Rex's Hystero Demonopathy.

Anna Murphy and Tor-Helge Skei have come up with a disturbing album. An album like this makes you also wonder what goes on in the mind of a truly unstable person, as well as the mind of the musicians at the steering wheel. It poses questions you just don't know the answers to. Yet, at its core, it is a satisfying musical journey through the imaginary wastelands.