Stream from the Heavens

I never actually sat down and decided to listen to an entire funeral doom album. In fact, I never cared about this genre, it wasn't anywhere in my radar of music, but I've always liked heavy and atmospheric compositions, with nice harmonies and melodic, yet sad or depressing riffs. This is what I've got from the few funeral doom artist I heard until this point, and I thought that if I wanted to get into this genre, I should start with what it's regarded as the first ever album in this genre and also one of the best ones in its story... but I didn't get what I was expecting.

You can tell me that I don't know anything about music, that I'm an idiot and I can appreciate such a masterpiece, or that I don't like funeral doom at all, but to be honest, none of those is true (except for all of them, maybe). I've liked the funeral doom I've heard before this, as well as what I've heard after it, and this is, so far, the only band I didn't find enjoyment in. This album has 6 tracks and it lasts almost 41 minutes, these are all long songs, and I'm ok with the length of them. They're all played at very slow tempos (I don't think this album ever goes above 60 BPM or so), and they all share one thing in common: the ability to make you fall asleep with extreme ease.

Those who love this album might already be cringing and would surely hit me in the face if they ever get a chance, but I have my reasons to dislike "Stream from the Heavens". First of all, there's a huge lack of good riffs, 75% of the songs are just sustained power chords played in what seems to be an A standard tuning (for extra thickness of the chords) and a Dorian minor scale in most of them (except for Elemental and probably tracks 5 and 6 which seem to be in a melodic minor scale), which means that some songs have an evil, somewhat-chromatic sound and chord progression, while others have a sad, melodic atmosphere and sound to them. When I hear atmospheric songs, I like them to be preferably melodic, depressing, dark, instead of evil, low-key brutal, as most tracks in this release are. Still touching this topic, there's almost no addition over these sustained power chords, you can rarely hear some arpeggios and at some parts of some songs there's a lead guitar, but nothing else at all. One of the best ways to make a good atmosphere in slow songs is using things like arpeggios, natural harmonics, some licks with reverb, and there's almost no use of this anywhere in this album except in "Everlasting" and "Elemental", which are the only songs I can think of that have this.

I might be being harsh with this album considering it was the first work in this genre and over the years different artists would perfect it, but it still doesn't take away the fact that there was a huge lack of ideas in the songwriting process of these songs. Thankfully, most songs are not just 8 minutes of 5th chords in downtuned guitars; various songs also have some melodic bridges, with clean and/or acoustic guitars and what seem to be MIDI organs or brass instruments (I can't actually tell to be honest). Can't blame them for using MIDI stuff if the y didn't have the necessary instruments back then, since many recordings of this kind and era used MIDI instruments as it was a new technology back then (and now it's a laughable meme thing). In one of the songs, honestly I can't remember which one it was because they all sound the same to me (except for "Elemental"), the song's bridge has a clean guitar, which to me seemed to be severely out of tune, and it had a terrible tone that didn't fit well wit the song at all, and that's one of the things that can somewhat ruin an entire song to me, and it's an insight that for me, affects in the entire release, due to an apparent lack of professionalism from the members of the band.

PS: I forgot to mention that there's also a presence of a synth in most of the songs, which definitely sounds like a MIDI to me, and it seeks to add to the atmosphere of the album, but never achieves it because of how terrible it sounds and how it lacks a good presence.

To add to the overall boredom of the release, the vocals are certainly bad. The album opens with what seems to be a burp with reverb, and basically the guttural vocals sound like a burp, they're certainly uncomfortable to listen to and overall ruin the entire vocal aspect of the album. The clean choirs aren't much better either. The drums are extremely simplistic, so simple in fact that anyone with some hand-to-feet coordination can make a drum cover of this whole album, and the bass... is there even a bass? The credits say no, apparently. If there even was a bass it would be tuned so low that it would cause a mini earthquake whenever it's played.

All of this brings us to my last point: the audio and overall production quality of this album. Let's be honest, the audio quality is bad, I don't know if this was recorded independently in some small amateur studio, in a professional studio or in one of the member's house, but it's definitely not great. I totally understand that this was recorded in 1992, and that the Thergothon's members most probably couldn't afford making a professional studio recording, so I guess I can let that pass, since I can't find any source referring to where and how this was recorded, but it sounds like it was probably done with a 4-track or something similar, probably all instruments in one take, not recorded separately, probably even recorded in one go. The mixing is bad, the drums are audible in the background, and they sound extremely bleak, the guttural vocals are somewhat loud while the clean backing vocals are certainly low in volume, the guitar lacks of a thick tone, or at least a thick-enough tone, it doesn't sound as deep as it should, and I don't mean by it's tuning, but by how it was thrown into the mix, it doesn't flood your headphones as I would expect it to, not sure if you get what I mean (but all of this might be just my headphones anyway). The lack of bass is also a great problem, because there's a lack of a "floor" to put in some way in the music, there's nothing giving these songs the deepness they need to sound as I would expect them to.

Although this album is definitely not what I was expecting and certainly disappointed me, at the end of the day everyone has different opinions on the matter. Many praise this album and regard it as the best funeral doom recording ever, while I only see its flaws and can't actually find much enjoyment in it. I could give this album a 20%, even a 10%, considering how I criticized it in this review, but I understand that this is nothing but a prototype of what would later become a full-fledged genre with tons of great bands and artists, and I understand that this is an old recording by some guys who had an idea, and tried to execute it as well as possible, and the results were praised by many, but not me.

I really wanted to like this album, but I can't find myself able to. I'd still recommend this to anyone, any day, because I'm one of the few who seemed to dislike this release, and I'm pretty sure that somebody else might find it very enjoyable, like many did before and many might do in the future. The only song I take from this album is "Elemental" to be honest, the rest are a big "meh" for me.

I might consider playing this album whenever I can't sleep from now on though, because it will surely take me to the realm of dreams in the time before the first track ends.