Written by:	Netzach
Published:	01.03.2022

When I think about the discographies of bands, I more often than not find myself placing them in one or two of the following categories: bands starting out with playing their favourite metal style and later perfecting it; bands doing likewise and then changing direction entirely, subcategorised into the ones later famous for their earlier or later material, respectively; bands not knowing what the hell they are doing at all and failing; bands likewise having no clue but ending up releasing a masterpiece or two…

Okay, it's a long list of potential labels. My point is, Tiamat is one of those bands that, like Ulver, Mogwai, Pink Floyd, and others, is hard to pigeonhole as they always seemed to simply do whatever the hell they felt like. More precisely, considering they as of 1996 became a band spearheaded and masterminded by Johan Edlund, one of Sweden's most underrepresented yet undeniable musical geniuses (and with an unbeatable voice to boot), I think it's safe to say that Tiamat is generally known for doing whatever Johan felt like doing.

Boy, did he want to do a lot of things. Death metal, black metal, symphonic metal, thrash metal, gothic rock, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, post-rock, avant-garde, electronic, trip hop, world music, singer-songwriter… Did I forget something this band has tried? Very likely. Before we come to that, however, it needs to be mentioned that however much this band might be known for their later (altogether mostly excellent) gothic rock/metal escapades, Tiamat remains one of these bands that will always be known in metal circles for their truly groundbreaking 1994 album Wildhoney.

The mid 90s was an awkward period for metal, especially in the more extreme substyles; as a genre, metal seemed to be constantly at odds between its history as a blues-or-classical-grounded approach to writing rocking or cerebral music, but as cheap-as-shit sounding Casio keyboards became affordable, the role of the synthesizer in metal started to tentatively solidify. Come on, even Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish has kept citing Wildhoney (particularly "Gaia" off of it) as a major influence. It's not their best album by far (are your feathers ruffled yet?), but no doubt one of the most influential metal albums there ever was. Wildhoney is one of these indelible transitional albums that simply hit the mother lode of inspiration and potential, and transformed the face of metal forever. Then, they'd go on to release an album that's barely even classifiable as rock, and it's my favourite album ever. More on this later, of course.

I've compiled a 15-song Spotify playlist available at the end of the article, feel free to give it a spin while reading! Lets… get into it, shall we?

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Like many (Nordic, but also from elsewhere) metal bands from the same period, Tiamat started out as an extreme metal band that through extensive experimentation developed from their idol-serving origins into an entity as unrecognisable as irresistible in its irreverent exploration of the boundaries of musical genres. In their beginnings, in the late 80s, Tiamat were a Stockholm-based death metal band known as Treblinka. Fortunately being asked to change their moniker after recording their demo in 1989, they adapted a demo song for the moody, melodic intro track "Sumerian Cry, Part 1", but most of the songs here are straight-up, early 90s Stockholm death, similar to the earliest works by Entombed, Therion, Amorphis and Sentenced (all of who would, in the same fashion as Tiamat, go on to create genre-defining albums of their own: death'n'roll, operatic metal, progressive folk metal, and Suomi metal, respectively).

The guitar tone is dirty yet crisp, the drums and growl forefront, the bass admirably present, and the songs themselves are… of variable quality. There is little of the atmospheric quality you'll find already on the follow-up album, and the tracks are mostly decent Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost, and, dare I say it, Metallica worship, but I'll be damned if "Where The Serpents Dwell" isn't one of the oldest examples of well done death/doom (The Ruins Of Beverast covered it on Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite). An interesting and important piece of Swedish and metal music history, buto my ears somewhat disposable in this band's catalogue.



Now we're talking. Well, not "we", I'm mostly listening. It's Johan who has started talking, and even singing a bit on songs. Tiamat's second album is very peculiar, especially considering it is from 1991. It predates Therion's Beyond Sanctorum, Amorphis' Tales From The Thousand Lakes, and Sentenced's North From Here, and somehow manages to piecewise encapsulate all the aspects that aforementioned bands would go on to delve deeper into. It also predates me, by a couple of months.

We're talking here about a, for their time, highly eclectic and inventive band on par with Celtic Frost (which was the most obvious inspiration for pretty much all early 90s Swedish metal). "Neo Aeon" is a sweeping intro, and the first notion of what the band would develop into. The thrash influences remain, best heard in the banger first proper song "Lady Temptress", which just oozes death and doom swag, and the more mid-paced, forgettable "Angels Far Beyond". "Sumerian Cry, Part III" is just a fucking sexy death metal song, with Johan making excursions into black metal shrieking.

The real gem here, though, and the herald of the lauded Wildhoney style, is "Mountain Of Doom". I dare you to show me an earlier example of such a beautiful mesh/mess of atmospheric, acoustic picking, thrash/death groove, and symphonic grandeur. Actually, no bet, I'm already playing "For Whom The Bell Tolls" from Metallica’s Ride The Lightning, but this is nearly as good in its epic-yet-grounded splendour. Already on The Astral Sleep, Johan Edlund had assumed lyric and songwriting duties, and while the concepts still deal very much a lot (as they would continue to) with themes from ancient civilisations, Johan's take on it is a more spiritual one than the Raiders Of The Lost Ark approach of the debut. Themes again shared by Therion, who had just started operating in the historical religious capital of Uppsala not far north of the actual capital. If you like early Therion, you need to check this album out. However…




…you first need to check this album out! Man, Tiamat's early records are way too often written off as "just decent death metal", when there's so much more to them, and while the following Wildhoney would be the album that finally gave the band the recognition they deserved as one of the most inventive, professional metal bands around at the time, I prefer Clouds; it's just so much more coherent (blame later Pink Floyd worship for this, I think). Hah, just kidding, of course.

Clouds remains an impressive work, though. "In A Dream" is a god-damn dream of a song in itself; the simplistic doom in the verse, the raging guitar melody in the bridge, and the charmingly eerie synth pad-driven chorus complete with an actual spoken-word title-dropping in a deadpan manner in between epic, reverberating pseudo-growls… Hell, draw your own conclusions, but to me, that makes for one of the most enjoyable and interesting metal songs ever put to tape. "Smell Of Incense" is highly moshable. "The Scapegoat" has a guitar hook and prog attitude worthy of mid 90s Amorphis. "A Caress Of Stars" sounds like a template to Katatonia's Brave Murder Day, and is moreover one of the earliest examples of gothic doom metal I can think of. It's a proper trip (and Johan would go on to sing about proper trips for most of Tiamat's career), but I'd rather kill myself than leave out this next mention:

"The sleeping beauty / She stops the bleeding / She stops the bleeding in my soul / She is fresh air in this stinking world"

Yep, it seems Johan already had a sweet tooth for heroin (it would later become the namesake of their 1996 album). It is one of the few drugs I've not dared to try, and I'm pretty fine with that. The song, however, has an oriental guitar hook that's as crushing as it is beautiful, airy synth pads lift the easier sections, and the gang-shouty chorus followed by a surprise breakneck thrash post-chorus will never get old. This song is metal perfection, which might be why Tiamat would go on to look outside the boundaries of metal ever since.




1994. Tiamat's final truly metal album. Tiamat's first truly progressive, psychedelic, and groundbreaking album. One of the absolute classics in metal canon, contested by few. Yep, it's Wildhoney. What can be said about it that hasn't already been said? We have a great staff review by Ivor of it, giving it a well deserved perfect score of 10. It is not a perfect album by any means, though, but I still agree with the rating. The sheer creativity and forward-thinking-ness on display here is shattering.

On Clouds, the heavy use of synth pads in the airier sections to accompany Johan's melancholic grunting barely foreshadow what you'll hear here, if you haven't heard it yet. Over a minute of psychedelic summer vibes that somehow sound like the ineffable album cover art in a nutshell start the album out until the death/doom earthquake that is the main riff of "Whatever That Hurts" finally drops. Keeps dropping. To torturedly whispering words about "overfilled toothpaste tubes" and "cockroaches served with cream". Who knows what makes a riff perfect, but if there's an example of a perfect metal riff, look no further than "Whatever That Hurts". Tiamat surely know this, as they would later write several songs obviously based on this riff.

"Honey tea / Psilocybe Larvae / Honeymoon / Silver spoon / Psilocybe tea / Psilocybe tea"

I'm getting the shivers just writing the words of the chorus down like this. It's that level of memorable. Yep, Johan definitely munched psychedelics at this point. The entire album is a love letter to psychedelic drugs. Hey, these liberty caps are growing all across Sweden in the autumn, so do like Johan and go mushroom picking. Watch out for cops patrolling the cattle meadows, though. Hah. Well, we also have the super-distressing bad-trip synth interlude "25th Floor" and sort of too-mellow romantic closer ballad "A Pocket Size Sun" on here, but they all fit into the context of the excellent opening salvo of the interconnected death/doom pieces of "Whatever That Hurts" and "The Ar", broken up by that creepy interlude and erupting in the anthemic, symphonic extreme metal masterpieces that are "Gaia" and "The Visionaire". The acoustic, folky ballad "Do You Dream Of Me?" is one of my most played, and most sung along to, songs ever, and would have been stellar even without the mind-blowing acoustic shredding that goes on in the guitar solo.

"I'd hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, or insanity to anyone, but it's always worked for me." – Hunter S. Thompson

Maybe don't follow good old Hunter's advice, though, because the naive drug romanticism of Wildhoney is about to take a dark turn… and stay there for a while.




If you look at my profile page, there's this silly little field where one can fill in their favourite album ever, as if there were ever a clear-cut answer for this question. However, the closest approximation to my personal truth is A Deeper Kind Of Slumber. Yeah, it's diverse to a fault, wacky as hell, self-indulgent, preposterous, unfocused, and has some really questionable content both lyrically and musically. It's also astoundingly inventive, admirably convincing, confidently performed, avant-garde, timeless, and one of the most unforgettable pieces of art I've ever encountered.

This is my first, and if needed, only choice for a desert island album. I will listen to it until I die, and it feels like I've heard it since before I was born. Contrary to most other favourites I have, this has nothing to do with memories or associations; the musical and lyrical content is simply tailor-made for my aesthetic sensibilities and personal experiences. I've been meaning to review this album for years, but I can't do it justice. I wrote a gushing review of King Crimson's Red, and I'd happily review most of the albums I consider rating 11/10, but here, words fail me. I don't know where to begin. More importantly, this is not the album where you'll want to begin when getting into Tiamat. You'll want Wildhoney or Amanethes for that.

"What is the universe anyway / But a pouch of silver coins / The intense breathing / Of a dying animal / A foreboding of afterlife / Master keys in oaken chest / The somewhere is mine / And from there I'll continue / All I asked for was a little love"

I'm not supposed to give 6 stars or a 10+ rating to anything. To quote the lyrics to "Mount Marilyn": "Do you really think I care? / Do you think I care at all?" I'll leave this non-explanation as, hopefully, an explanation enough. Words fail me, so just go along with it. I don't even care if you like this album, or even listen to it. A Deeper Kind Of Slumber is ineffable, and that's why I worship it. To death, and possibly beyond.




Alright, if the former album wasn't divisive enough, here is where Tiamat suddenly take a sharp turn for gothic neighbourhoods. Literally. Shit, this band's entire career so far has been more or less an auditory representation of Johan's drugs of choice. Alcohol-fuelled death metal into benzo-quashed death/doom into shroom-munching psychedelia into heroin-bred esoterica…

What's left to imbibe for psychoactive stimulation? Stimulants, of course. "Hot metal and methedrine", to quote Andrew Eldritch on "Lucretia My Reflection" from The Sisters Of Mercy's oeuvre d'or Floodland. Loud, moody gigs akin to the rock equivalent of raves. Preferably in Berlin or Hamburg, according to Johan's lyrics. Yep, what's left is a sharp turn left. Having kicked everyone but himself from the band, and exploited his record label funding of 60 000 kr (drop a zero for the euro equivalent) to do exactly what the hell he wanted on A Deeper Kind Of Slumber, Johan returns with a half-new team and a wildly different direction only hinted at with the gothic metal of "Cold Seed" on the previous album.

The progressivity and avant-garde (and post-rock and trip hop and…) of 1996 have all been dialed back (yet subtly remaining) in favour of danceably suicidal straight-time post-punk beats and karaoke-worthy verse-chorus structures. "Brighter Than The Sun" is a wonderful goth rock banger, "Dust Us Our Fare" is memorably slow and sinister, "As Long As You Are Mine" builds on excellent quasi-disco synthwork, and "Best Friend Money Can Buy" is a beautiful, nostalgic ballad almost on par with aforementioned The Sisters Of Mercy's finest moment "Some Kind Of Stranger" from First And Last And Always, but half of the album falls sort of flat, and the cover of The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil" won't win many accolades in 2022 either. As a stepping stone to the gothy craftsmanship Tiamat would soon provide us, Skeleton Skeletron is nonetheless an essential album, but one that can be skipped until later.




How's that for an album title? Cheeky, catchy, totally miserable yet cutely irreverent; this is why I love Johan Edlund. I swear, if I were… nah, his lyrics clearly imply he's into women anyway. Anyway, this is a stellar album title, and the album has got some great songs; it is better than Skeleton Skeletron, and displays a clearly self-defined style within the realm of gothic rock… but it is not a particularly solid album.

“So Much For Suicide” is a Tiamat classic, with lyrics making fun of self-absorbed drug addicts, and “Fireflower” is a wonderful, moody, atmospheric ballad. The rock influences heard already as early as in the guitar solos of The Astral Sleep finally crystallise on Judas Christ, such as in the swinging “I Am In Love With Myself”. The singer-songwriter touches tentatively explored on earlier songs such as “Do You Dream Of Me?” or “Mount Marilyn” also finally crystallise with the Bruce Springsteen-inspired “Heaven Of High” and “Too Far Gone”. However, this is not the band’s finest moment, nor is it even one of the finer moments. We would have to wait one more year for Johan to perfect the mellow, romantic, gothic style he started trying out on Skeleton Skeletron. The album in question would be called…




God-damn it, this is a good album. It is an <expletive> good album. Yeah, there’s no metal to be found here (but the metal influences would resurface in 2008), but it all works to the band’s favour. Prey starts off with the timeless gothic rock hit “Cain”, showcasing some of Johan’s most beautiful lyrics yet (and this is one hell of an achievement…):

“If I go, will you follow / Me through the cracks and hollows? / And I would be your Cain / If you would be here now”

That’s just the start of it. The mellow mood of Prey would generally put me off, as I’m not a fan of the kind of crybaby post-prog music exemplified by Antimatter, Porcupine Tree, or later Riverside, but the occult concepts and general fuck-it attitude running through this entire album puts it in a higher echelon entirely.

There is a lot to mention on this album, especially the off-beat vocals driving the title track, and the absolute karaoke-worthy, danceable hit “Carry Your Cross And I’ll Carry Mine”, but nothing compares to “Divided”. “Divided” is very likely the most heartbreakingly beautiful love song ever written, all categories included. The romantic, heartfelt, yet ultimately hopeless lyrics are perfectly combined with the song dynamics; rising from a piano-driven ballad, through a baritone anthemic chorus, into an otherworldly crescendo comprised of the words “I am divided… from love” leading up to orchestral, female backing vocals readying the listener for sublime guitar solo that eventually ends in Johan, a cappella, softly singing:

“I have to say / That all of this time / I’ve waited for someone like you / You are my dream / You are my dream / You are my dream”

It all sounds very cute and romantic, until you realise that the song deals with fear of commitment and failing loyalty. Prey is also where the lyrical themes of Satanism and Thelema beginning to truly become an integral part of Johan’s lyrics; something that would be particularly expounded upon in their undeservedly underrated 2008 album, Amanethes.




Okay, so Amanethes is one hell of a curveball. For some reason, it is not available on streaming services, which is a damn shame, as it is Tiamat’s most accomplished album since their eternal masterpiece A Deeper Kind Of Slumber. While the years, and three albums, released between 1996 and 2008 were all progressively refining the gothic rock influences with ambient synth work and Pink Floyd-ish guitarwork, Amanethes really pulls the band back towards their extreme metal beginnings in a way I doubt any one fan of this band would have ever expected.

Sure, most of this album is filled with gothic rock anthems; the most notable ones being “Will They Come?”, “Misantropolis”, and the terrifying ballad “Amanes”. About a third of the album is, however, for the first time since the mid-90s, filled with properly extreme metal, which is why I count this album as something of a true return to form and proof of Tiamat’s unending irreverence and inventiveness.

The opening track, “The Temple Of The Crescent Moon”, immediately leads off with double-kick drumming and Johan doing his thrash/deathy first-four-albums voice for the first time in nearly two decades. The second track, “Equinox Of The Gods”, dials it up even further, building on a scathing tremolo riff, tongue-in-cheek Satanic lyrics, black metal screams, and an undeniable atmosphere. The album then winds down into a number of goth ballads, only to come back with “Katarraktis Apo Aima” (Waterfall Of Blood) and “Raining Dead Angels”, that never fail to give me the shivers with their blasphemous, self-conscious lyrics. “Misantropolis” is a proper anthem, and one of this band’s best songs ever, and while a few of the more singer-songwriter-ish cuts such as “Circles” and “Meliae” would go on to be improved on their as-of-yet latest album, Tiamat on Amanethes displays a band completely unconcerned with what anybody else will think; it could be written off as unfocused, but for a band that traversed all of the styles touched on this album and many more, it feels more like an honourable throwback to the band’s entire discography. Heartily recommended.




When I discovered Tiamat, Amanethes had just been released, and I quickly fell in love with pretty much every single song they’d ever recorded. I never expected Johan & Co. to release an album that would go on to be remembered as the biggest highlight of theirs in two decades, but… they did. The Scarred People is a fantastically melancholic, epic, heavy, yet intimate album that dials down the metal traits of Amanethes in favour of a mostly singer-songwriter vibe. Just to prove a point, it even includes two excellent cover songs of Lana Del Rey’s “Born To Die” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Paradise".

While the first two tracks might not turn any heads around fully, it’s all proper downhill from there. “384 - Kteis” (Kteis is Greek for pubes, just sayin’) recycles the timeless main riff of Wildhoney’s “Whatever That Hurts” with sinisterly sexual lyrics, and “Radiant Star” and “The Sun Also Rises” including the bluesy, hard-rocking, excellent guitar solo ending them off on “Before Another Wilbury Dies” is a trio of tracks so rememberable that even I cannot ever forget them:

“In Hamburg suburbia / With a girl from Serbia / And all God’s crystal methedrine / And a train to take me back to Berlin / All was smoke and all was dirt / A little Swedish lady came along…”

Andrew Eldritch would be proud, for sure. “Love Terrorists” include some borderline-harsh vocals; beginning with a lovely, catchy lyrical swagger about “On a 42-inch TV screen I watch the tears of Jesus”, but ending in desperate screams akin to the end of “Mount Marilyn” off of A Deeper Kind Of Slumber, repeatedly asking: “Can you hear me? / Can you hear me now?”

The Lana Del Rey cover is much better than the original, which is a damn good song to begin with, and perfectly suits Tiamat’s sensibilities. Before the cover of “Paradise” ends the album, “The Red Of The Morning Sun” amps up the good old Edlund-esoterica to a mid 90s level and is as sinister as it is cosy and beautiful. This is one hell of a good swan song album, should the band decide to call it quits.

“1 part of crystal oxygen / 2 parts of glycerine / 3 parts of cold spring water / To bring back the 4 river daughters / 5 steps out of the black room / With 666 of gloom leaving / 7 seashells on the shore / Whispering 8, 9, 10, and I wanna hear more”

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In case it wasn’t obvious, Tiamat is one of my very favourite bands, one of Sweden’s (and possibly metal’s) most influential bands, and the band responsible for both some of my favourite albums and the one definite favourite album of mine of all time. I cannot praise Tiamat enough. To quote myself from earlier, trying to describe A Deeper Kind Of Slumber, to this band and as an ending to this article, I can only kindly ask you to envision what my scatterbrained, talkative brain means when it truly means these three words: “words fail me”.

Start with Wildhoney! Then, for death metal, Clouds; for gothic rock, The Scarred People; for experimental, A Deeper Kind Of Slumber. Then, for more death metal, Therion - Beyond Sanctorum, Amorphis - The Karelian Ishtmus, Sentenced - Shadows Of The Past; for more gothic rock/metal, Fields Of The Nephilim - Mourning Sun, The Sisters Of Mercy - Floodland, The Cure - Pornography; for more experimental, I really don't know any other album like A Deeper Kind Of Slumber - suggestions?

Listen to Tiamat,and discover one of the best and most influential Swedish metal and rock bands we've ever had. Hail Johan Edlund. Over and out.