The Past Is Alive

When I saw that Туман were slotted to put out a new album after nearly eight years of silence, I was instantly excited to get my hands on this. I pre-ordered this immediately and it has finally arrived! After the raw and intense "Loquitur cum Algo Sathanas" Туман take a more thoughtful approach to "The Past is Alive". I'm sure the album title is in reference to the lyrics in Mayhem's song "Pagan Fears", so I'm a little surprised by how this album actually sounds. I thought it would sound like total Mayhem worship, but we actually got something a little more than that. The booklet is merely okay, there isn't a lot of art in it. However, it is multi-paged and features the Hungarian lyrics with English translations.

"The Past is Alive" really lacks the intensity of the prior releases, so if you were expecting that kind of Black Metal expression from Туман, you may find this album a little disappointing. However, I'm going to look at this as seriously mature growth of the band's writing and look at how impressive this album actually is overall. Туман have truly favored a much more atmospheric approach to writing this time around. It seems that Atmospheric Black Metal craze is really influencing a lot of new writing. "The Past is Alive" is not an outright atmospheric album, it really is a Black Metal album, but it has a certain density in the production that just lets the listener immerse themselves. "The Past is Alive" paints an incredibly haunting soundscape for the listener to simply drown in. The overly simplistic "Emlékezés" is made mesmerizing by listening to Dim hauntingly recite vocals in her native language. Maybe it's because my native language is English, but listening to Hungarian cast in this fashion conjures this really immense intensity to the song. The fact that they can do this while barely playing says a lot about their ability to control the atmosphere they're building. It's an album that you really experience as a whole, rather than on an individual track basis. I feel their prior albums worked more individually, but "The Past is Alive" builds a cohesive work. Tracks like "Örület" manage to stand out and give hints of Arckanum influence, but amidst some of the slower tracks the album comes off as quite a journey. The track listing is definitely very well arranged for this experience.

In the end I really did love this album. It's still very early in the year to say how this will match up against the rest of the releases. However, while this is nothing what I expected from Туман, I really did appreciate this album a lot. It is actually a very beautiful album. I'm not sure how many Туман fans will embrace this, sort of, new sound, because it is very different from all their other material. I do recommend trying this album out, just don't expect it to be like their prior catalog.