Stream from the Heavens

To say Stream From the Heavens is good would be an understatement. It's a monolith, a testament to swirling winds and autumnal depression. It's the embodiment of depression. The guitars sound like the gentle washing of water along the shoreline, and the drums pound a slow beat, a march towards the burial. Thergothon manage to craft something truly amazing here, not just something that rides off of it's legendary status.

Many say that Thergothon were the first funeral doom band, and while I disagree (Mordor has that distinction, with traces of industrial, ambient, and black metal mixed with the funeral doom), I do believe Thergothon perfected it. The way the keys hover uneasily above the swirling, effected guitars, the way the dirty and clean vocal harmonies play throughout the first track; it's all here. Speaking of the first track, “Everlasting” opens the album up with the growls we are all used to. Then, as mentioned before, clean vocals come in, but they sound distant. It might have been unintentional, but they created a very desolate song, a portrait of being lost and alone. The guitars swirl in a melancholic way throughout the song, and drums pound the doomed beat. It's the perfect way to start an album.

The second track, “Yet The Watchers Guard”, is even slower than the first track, but not lacking the swirling, gothic guitars of the first. It does something I've never heard replicated in funeral doom since, with the guitars building up somewhat, then cutting off for an eerie keyboard noise, then cutting in again. It's quite beautiful, and it happens many times in the song. The vocals are mostly rough in this song, and it really showcases the vocal talents of Niko Skorpio; this man can growl. He sounds like a beast, not even half a man in his vocals. It reminds me almost of Mournful Congregation's singer, the way he almost removes the human element. This song moves nicely into the melancholy of the third track.

Moving on, the third track of this album, “The Unknown Kadeth In The Cold Waste”, is really a work of art, more than a piece of music. The vocals echo throughout the first part of the song, and are clean. The guitars do the standard swirl, while the keys hover above. The song doesn't really become amazing until the vocals stop, the guitars become clean, and the keys are turned up. Gentle guitar strumming, with sorrowful picking, and the melancholic progression of the keys makes this track quite beautiful. Like anything good, it only last for a short while before going back to growls and swirling guitars. It is a moment of beauty, with no words, only the strumming and picking of the guitar, and the hovering keys. This is quite easily the most beautiful track on the album.

For “Elemental”, the fourth track, it is the plodding pace that makes it good. And it is very slow, but it adds to the atmosphere. This is the first track I ever heard, when getting into funeral doom. It was slow, it was growling, it was depressed. And much like the rest of the songs on this album, it is beautiful in it's own way.

“Who Rides The Astral Wings” is the second to last track, and starts off as you would come to expect a Thergothon song to start off; plodding drum beat, swirling guitars, powerful vocals. But then, after doing this for a minute or so, it all goes silent. A keyboard hum fills the silence, then the guitars and vocals, along with the keys, make something strange. It's magical, watching a track become something entirely different, yet still beautiful. Much like the keyboard and acoustic passage in “The Unknown Kadeth In The Cold Waste”, this keys and guitar combination doesn't last long, but like that passage, it definitely leaves a mark.

The last and final track, “Crying Blood & Crimson Snow”, combines the delicate parts of the album. Clean echoing vocals, the guitar and keys combination, and a heavy sense of dread and melancholy. The lyrics foretell the end: "The blade (so sharp and cold)/ May the spirits chant my name". It is a beautiful song, which paints futility in an almost poetic way.
It is a perfect end to an album that lives up to it's legend.