Album Review: Tiamat – “The Scarred People”
“When nature calls we all shall drown…”
When Tiamat releases a new album, most metal fans’ reactions run the gamut from “ho-hum” to “big fucking deal, who cares” to “they should’ve just stopped making albums after _____________”. Pretty sad, really. In my opinion, even though the band has more embodied a sound relative to hard gothic rock than metal for the last 15 years or so, they still release quality music. I’ve followed the band since “The Astral Sleep”, and literally worship “Wildhoney”, but face it folks, they will never be a metal band again. It’s not what they feel inside, so why should they lie to themselves to please you? Besides being disingenuous, it would probably sound awful. I think their more atmospheric and experimental albums since the hard metal days have been different magnitudes of ear candy, but the latest, “Scarred People” is definitely their best since “Wildhoney”. All of the different sounds they play with and mold into great compositions equate in structure to some of the most exciting sounds of the past decade. They all fit into boxes as ‘songs’ yet they evade the tag of ‘boring’ as they are clearly not one-dimensional. It’s a record where ten listens will give you ten different results with the use of nuance, yet still the songs retain recognition. They are surreal soundscapes, with the vivid brightnesses and myriads of levels but without the clutter and confusion. At once stripped down and multilayered. For those like me who typically see the term ‘gothic’ as pejorative when used in music and pop culture, don’t let that scare you off from checking this out. If you can imagine the smoother moments of Devin Townsend mixed with certain elements of latter-day Ulver, this may well work for you. Also… a surprise left-hand meandering into Nashville territory on a track… just give it a listen, and feel free to send me obscenity-laced comments if you hate this…
I don’t like it. I just…can’t take it. I tried, but the vocals (which I call “mock Elvis”) and the whole goth rock thing are just not up my alley, and that’s that. I’m never one to say that a band should stop making music. This what they are now, and that’s fine. More power to them. I got into them on their first album, and I just can’t wrap my head around anything they’ve done after ‘Wildhoney’ (which is an album I like, but by no means do I love it). Hey, I still like Amorphis, even though I was way into them during their ‘Karelian Isthmus’ era. Same with Katatonia and Anathema. So, it’s not like I never like change. It’s that this particular direction that Tiamat has taken simply doesn’t interest me in the least. Oh, well. To each his own, etc.
Right on Hector, not everything is everyone’s cup of tea. Change is inevitable over a long period of time, unless you are the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Motorhead or Impaled Nazarene, but most changes are less extreme than Tiamat’s transformation. Thanks for the comment, man. You, like me, definitely seem to favor old school death metal as a musical style, your opinion is always welcome here whether it is in agreement with mine or not. Rock on, bro \m/