TIAMAT - Sumerian Cry

Hellslaughter

This says it all. Lars Johan Edlund Andersson, aka Reverend Hellie, aka Notoroius PIG, aka Number 7 Picses, aka Year of The Pig was in 1990... Hellslaughter. In his semblance, symphonic black metal, dark metal or goth-rock were then non-melodic death metal. After having played for a few years in a death metal band called Treblinka (broke up in 1989) Johan Edlund gathered the courage and wrote Sumerian Cry, which he released in 1990 under the name Tiamat.

I listened to this album in 1993, together with the promising youth that would become the Admin of Metalfan :). We were crazy about Clouds, we got Astral Sleep right after, we practically listened to those two at the same time. Then we were both desperately trying to find the first album from this awesome band. Admin managed first and announced me over the phone: “Dude, I got Sumerian Cry, but it’s kinda boo!”. “Eh, how boo can it be?”, I thought to myself and rushed over to hear it. I was extremely disappointed. Not that I didn’t like death metal, but I couldn’t see, how can I put it, the prototype/embryo of the musical ideas that led to the exceptional Clouds. I listened to Sumerian Cry a few times more, and then I forgot it.

Hearing it again, 13 years later, I realize (as it is natural) that I was wrong. Well, I think that for 90% of the things you think about 13 years later you realize that you were wrong :). Never mind that, it is the Intro to the album that should have gotten me thinking. And so was Edlund’s voice, having the deep timbre that we constantly find on all other albums – albeit masked under various filters or effects. Evilized (without being exceptional) has that death’n’roll mid-break born before its time, repeating the theme at a much higher speed right after that. The same, Where The Serpents Ever Dwell with its outro tells a few things about what was to follow on Tiamat albums.

But but but,... that wretched word from “yes, but...”. But, in 1990, to be someone in death metal you had to compete with Death’s Spiritual Healing, with Entombed’s Left Hand Path and, why not, with Napalm Death’s Harmony Corruption  (yes, I know, it leans towards grind...). And Sumerian Cry would lose these fights, I say. It lacks the strength – in guitars, vocals, rhythms. The production doesn’t help it either: it is clean, but lacks muscle. An album that is neither decisively violent, nor decisively technical. It’s in the category “We were young once...”. At the time when it was released, I’d say it deserved a 7. But who am I to speak?! A great fan of Hellslaughter :)

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