Tiamat
A Different Kind Of Slumber
Century Media
I officially dub this group the “Pink Floyd of Metal.” I was blown away by this release – Tiamat have decided to cast away all their roots (or maybe they haven’t?!?!?) and put out an album unlike anything they have never released in their career. I think that it is safe to say that there is no metal-oriented band that has ever put out an album like this. If you compare this to another album by the same group, you will find almost no similarities. To be honest, I really can’t even call Tiamat a metal band anymore. I dare any metal head out there to play this album for their friends that don’t like metal and see what they think! The song structure they use has been completely ripped apart and put back together in a different fashion from their old days. They have abandoned their old style and moved on to what they feel like doing rather then try to imitate their old material and doing a lackluster job. Some bands don’t evolve very well and fizzle out, some try to sell out and compromise their style, but Tiamat has done neither.
A Different Kind of Slumber is a fairly mellow album with smooth vocals bordering on timid whispers and a level of experimentation that has never been brought to the metal world. I started this review by comparing the band to Pink Floyd; while the band obviously has their own style, they still derive a lot of their influence from the aforementioned. They use this influence to fuse their past experience with music from other cultures as well as a little bit of ambient as you will see on the songs “Trillion, Zillion Centipedes” and “The Desolate One.” Although they blend in many different styles, you will never see one style come to the front and dominate the song, each new tool that they use is just meant to decorate a song rather then dominate it.
I wish I could tell you where to go to hear some of the new Tiamat songs, because the band have alienated themselves. This is the consequence of putting out a truly unique album; you can not play this on the traditional metal shows because it is not metal, but the rock radio stations won’t touch it because no one who normally listens to that crap has heard of Tiamat. No matter what kind of music you listen to, everybody, and I mean everybody, should go out of their way to hear this album. Century Media, 1453-A 14th St., Suite 324, Santa Monica, CA 90404; http://www.centurymedia.com
