Thergothon

Stream from the Heavens (1994)

Stream from the Heavens is both sad and beautiful. Sad not as in the sadness of futility and suicide, but the kind of sadness of those searching for something. The kind of sadness found alone in a great forest - the solitude of the dreamer. Sadness about the soulless lives we live. Sadness coming from an unquenchable thirst for knowledge long-lost. Knowledge of the stars and the stories they tell and the lessons once learnt before we covered them behind the light pollution of our big cities. That kind of profound, meaningful sadness.

Immediately apparent in this music are the reverberations of lower frequencies uncovering vast spaces of sound - like being thrown amidst a cavernous lair. These appear as earthy, terrifying, ground-shaking nightmares created by the bass and drums and some of the deeper notes of the guitar. Clashing with these deeper, rumbling sounds are the higher frequencies of the music, the slow, winding, sorrowful guitar and keyboard melodies. Together this creates massive layers of sound and has an approach not unlike the best dark ambient music. Deep, gurgling subterranean growls sound out like a horrific emanation of the old Lovecraftian Gods. There are also droning, sorrowful cleaner vocals or (muffled) spoken voices and at times these run simultaneously against the growls as if they were the tortured crying out of lost souls from somewhere deep down below trapped inside the darkness.

And what takes place in this void? There is the lure of dark magic beyond the threshold - the old magic, lost in ages past - a search for it and the pain that leads us here in the first place. 

Thergothon's undeniable strength is their ability, like the best Doom Metal bands, of crafting the perfect conditions within a song arrangement to hit the listener with maximum emotional impact at a chosen moment. To do this they implement slow, minimalist and highly introspective build-ups to lull the listener inside an atmosphere that is full of anguish and despair. When all hope is lost and we feel as if we have been swallowed by the funeral gloom, resolute life-affirming crescendos burst out of the darkness. The beauty lies in their contrast. For instance, listen to the segue into the highly emotional and beautiful crescendo on The Unknown Cadath in the Cold with those "baroque" sounding harmonies between the keys and the guitars. Also the captivating, mesmerising feeling and maximum impact when the drums and bass roar into life for a massive accentuation on Elemental. You get the feeling in these moments that a dark threshold has been crossed and there is no going back,  but you have changed and it is probably for the best.