TIAMAT - The Astral Sleep

“The trust and the money that Century Media invested in us for this album made me realize for the first time that Tiamat could actually become an important band someday.” As Johan Edlund himself would admit in an interview, the contract with Century Media and the attention focused on them forced the members of Tiamat to do something seriously for the first time. Thus, one year after Sumerian Cry the released The Astral Sleep, the first Tiamat album where you can see the roots of what would become Clouds and Wildhoney.

Edlund’s intention, visible from this album, was to write music that was different from the death metal of his fellow countrymen of Unleashed or Entombed. However, The Astral Sleep remains essentially a death metal album, while including atypical elements for the genre in 1991. Keyboard parts, doom influences, acoustic guitars and the melodies that exist on the 12 songs leave their mark (albeit rather clumsily) on its sound, crystallising in an early form of what was to become later the trademarks of Tiamat.

As most of you who read this, I discovered this album after I was already a fan of Tiamat due to Clouds. It is obvious that neither Sumerian Cry nor The Astral Sleep could captivate me as Clouds did, so they were not too often in my playlist. The record does contain some interesting parts one can listen to with pleasure even in 2006. Especially Mountain of Doom, Angels Far Beyond and On Golden Wings have going for them, besides the quaint charm added by the passage of the year, a rather complex musical structure.

While on Sumerian Cry the lyrics were largely written by guitarist Stefan 'Emetic' Lagergren, Astral Sleep becomes Edlund trial by fire as a lyric writer. Even though we still have lyrics flirting with occultism and Satanism, we now find themes such as dream, initiatic journeys, which will appear obsessively on all Tiamat albums.

The Astral Sleep remains an important stage in the Swedes’ discography, but its value lies more in its historical importance rather than in the qualities of music on this album.

Dragos P. Nota: 7.5