TIAMAT -

TIAMAT - PREY - CENTURY MEDIA
Truth be told, Prey should not have been reviewed here. Tiamat has long since passed from the kingdom of metal to the commercial dark side and Prey - whose cover design is quite reminiscent of the band's Judas Christ album - is certainly not about to change that. Edlund and his cast of dismal men are reenacting their Dead Can Dance and Moby influences. As such, the album is a good bet for fans of soft goth and pop. Prey certainly conveys a lot of atmospheric and emotional ambience, but is of no interest to fans of music of the gods, heavy metal. It is just that a warning was in order. - Ali "The Metallian"

TIAMAT - AMANETHES - NUCLEAR BLAST  
After an absence of five years, Tiamat (a.k.a Johan Edlund) has returned with an album influenced by his new place of residence, Greece. Amanethes is the band’s first album on Nuclear Blast Records (Century Media issued the obligatory compilation last year), which might explain the gap between this and the band’s last release. If the contract negotiations have had a hand in the delay then the album’s opening line of “It's been a long time but we are here again/ It's been five long years of thunder, lightning and rain...” is pretty interesting.
On the musical front, this is the same old goth rock for which Tiamat is known - unless one recalls the band’s audacious death metal roots wimp-out BC. Amanethes is Tiamat a bit older, a bit mellower and a little more subdued. The baritone voice still reminds one of Type O and melancholy, and the goth is intact, but check in and hear some '70s rock or Pink Floyd thrown in there too. Meliae is pure Roger Waters for instance. From gruff to mellow the album still conveys everything Tiamat is expected to and fans won’t be disappointed. The samples, keyboards, acoustic strums, slow movements, female backing vocals and Moby love-ins are all in. Although describing this album as “dark” is not quite accurate. For that description one should look at the last Celtic frost album, Monotheist. Slow and grudging is more like it. - Ali “The Metallian”