On Thorns I Lay complete in the best way their return at their traditional sound, the melodic doom death metal we loved back in the 1990s when they were jumping out like a fly on pie among the other bands of the greek metal scene of that era. Through the years (their career is 25+ years old now!) they went through lot of changes but “Aegean Sorrow” was the ideal come back for them and now with “Threnos” they managed to offer an album that will easily be one of the best albums this year.
Nice album cover, great production (mastered by Dan Swanö) and a sound that continues from where they stopped at Aegean Sorrow. Darkness and sorrow come together taking us by the hand into their world. The first thing I noticed was the lack of female vocals, here we have only the brutal ones by Stefanos who’s doing great job. There are seven compositions, all of them of high quality, slow/mid tempo on most of them, riff-oriented of course and the typical melodic lead of the band that offer the necessary variety along with small surprises here and there like the Alexander’s violin on “Cosmic Silence”, the keyboards that match beautifully through out the album etc There is a great sense of the old On Thorns I Lay through out the album, something that will bring big smiles on the faces of their old fans but they’re doing it a nice way without just copying themselves.
Ideal closing with the melancholic epic “Odysseia”. This is the only composition where a woman voice can be heard as the actress Penelope Anastasopoulou recites in some parts of a track that combines nicely proper doom/death metal along with some acoustic passage.
