Gothic/Sympho-Operatic/Death, Drone, Funeral Doom

И пока это, как мне кажется, явно лучшая вещь с "Leviathan II".

Склонен согласиться.

написал Видаль

Который ещё и разыгрался под конец, как почти никогда до этого.

Который ещё и разыгрался под конец, как почти никогда до этого.

Учитывая, что соло были и в предыдущих двух синглах, не удивлюсь, если он на второй части отыграется за всего "Антихриста".

Кстати, название новой песни является отсылкой на 55-ю суру Корана, в одном из пассажей которой говорится "Wa Khalaqa Al-Jānna Min Mārijin Min Nārin", или "И создал джиннов из чистого пламени".

Чтобы как-то разбавить ожидание альбома, запощу-ка пару, как по мне, очень любопытных комментариев Криса из запрещенной в России соцсети.
Контекст ответа № 1 - кто-то раскритиковал "Litany of the Fallen" за то, что песня не похожа на Therion:

Saying "This is not Therion" is either childish, ignorant or absurd. On Deggial we had both a straight guitar based heavy metal song like FOTG and orchestral based songs songs that barely had guitars like Via Nocturna and Eternal R. on the very same album. We did death metal albums. We did sub-pop inspired rock like Dreams of Swedenborg, Laibach inspired Prometeuss E. prog songs on GK, Klaatu-inspired 70's symponic rock with Land of K, we did bombastic symphonic metal, power metal, folk metal, pop songs with metal guitars, commersial ballads and an ABBA-cover etc etc. It's all what Therion has been about, doing all sorts of stuff, sometimes crazy, sometimes closer to previous stuff. So it's quite absurd, childish or ignorant saying something is "not Therion" just because you don't happen to like it when it style wise it totally within the frames of what the band has been doing over the years, albeit with a bit more polished sound.

Контекст ответа № 2 - другой человек назвал ту же песню излишне простой:

It's simple in a way that it's very accessible to the ear. But musically speaking it has complex odd time signatures and the choral arrangements in the chorus has one of the most complex harmonies we did I think. The end is also quite proggy in it's over all arrangements. It's like with ABBA and Queen, it's music for the masses, but if you know anything about music and start digging into their compositions and arrangements, you will find it's not as simple as you thought. That's not to say this song is any near as good as ABBA or Queen though (I wish).

But it's weird when you get critical opinions pretty much saying "The song is bad because it's in major" if the song is actually in minor. In your case you say the song is simple, but when you give example of songs that are supposedly not simple, you actually mention songs that are even more simple. Eye of Shiva is a commercial ballad and Ten courts is also a very commercial straight forward song (using some Chinese samples instead of other sounds doesn't change that fact). Fact is that most of the most popular Therion songs are very simple. If you look at the most popular songs on Spotify right now, it's Lemuria (3 chord camp fire ballad), Rise of Sodom (guitar is playing D# with some additional C# and E pretty much the entire song) and Birth of Venus (super straight pop song with some 80's simple heavy metal riff in the verse). If the lack of complexity of this song make it not good, then 90% of all the Therion songs since Vovin and onwards sucks too. What I'm saying is, if you like older Therion, but not this song, it must be for some other reason. I'm not arguining with you not liking it, that's none of my business.

Fact is that I LOVE simple music. AC/DC and Accept would be two of my all time fave bands and while I also love prog and multi layered music, I don't think such music is musically superior, that would be like saying ice hockey is more advanced than alpine skiing just because they have more people involved playing). No matter if you do prog or play rock n roll, it's similarly hard to make a song that can touch the heart of millions of people. I am equally proud of Lemuria (which any beginner could have written) as I am of Via Nocturna, which is probably my most complex composition. You know why? Two reasons. One is because it was equally hard to compose. Take a guitar and try to write a hit with 3 chords and see how easy it is for your self. Easy to play and it could have been just about any average guy in an average band that wrote it - but it wasn't. Anyone could have written Paranoid and most Sabbath hits too - but they didn't. Or any of the hit songs by AC/DC.
The other reason is that it made many people happy. I always wrote music to please my self, but meeting and writing with all those people who had the same feeling from my music that I had growing up with the bands I like - THAT has been extremely rewarding. To have been able to create something that millions of people have found some joy in. I never cared for fame, but like being successful when it comes as a side effect of me making music from the heart. It feels like you share something personal and important to you with all these people.

Eye of Shiva is a commercial ballad and Ten courts is also a very commercial straight forward song (using some Chinese samples instead of other sounds doesn't change that fact). Fact is that most of the most popular Therion songs are very simple. If you look at the most popular songs on Spotify right now, it's Lemuria (3 chord camp fire ballad), Rise of Sodom (guitar is playing D# with some additional C# and E pretty much the entire song) and Birth of Venus (super straight pop song with some 80's simple heavy metal riff in the verse).

Как-то Крис уж очень решительно кучу своих песен по сути попсой нарёк. Может они и не содержат каких-то шибко специфичных для обычного уха гармоний и тембров, но уж совсем "straightforward" называть их я бы поостерёгся. Надеюсь, он так выразился, намеренно преувеличивая суть своих слов.

I don't think such music is musically superior, that would be like saying ice hockey is more advanced than alpine skiing just because they have more people involved playing). No matter if you do prog or play rock n roll, it's similarly hard to make a song that can touch the heart of millions of people.

Ну и тут я, конечно, решительно не согласен. Поставил, считай, на один уровень по музыкальности трёхаккордные незатейливые песенки с "multylayered music", да ещё и пользуясь достаточно далёким от критичного оценивания музыки критерием популярности у масс. В принципе - его право, но я здесь убедился, что по части восприятия музыки у нас с этим товарищем пути-дорожки разошлись. 

Поставил, считай, на один уровень по музыкальности трёхаккордные незатейливые песенки с "multylayered music", да ещё и пользуясь достаточно далёким от критичного оценивания музыки критерием популярности у масс.

Критерий, возможно, и сомнительный (успех всегда имеет под собой и внемузыкальные причины помимо музыкальных), но мерить музыкальность исключительно сложностью - ничуть не менее сомнительный подход. Впрочем, что в плане сочинительства Юнссон с некоторых пор изрядно обленился - для большинства ценителей его творчества, увы, не новость.

Крис тут начал постепенно выкладывать подробную инфу по песням с грядущего альбома, поэтому я буду ее здесь дублировать, отмечая особо интересные (на мой взгляд, естессно) детали. Разбор песен с первой части от Криса был мне весьма и весьма интересен, поэтому, может быть, в этот раз и кому-то еще зайдет.

Track 1: AEON OF MAAT

There are 3 tracks in the pool of songs written for the Leviathan trilogy that wasn’t originally intended for these albums.
”Aeon of Maat” is (typically for opening tracks) an uptempo song and is actually a leftover from the ”Beloved Antichrist” rock/metal musical. It wasn’t left out because it wasn’t good, but the project was growing too long and would have reached 4 hours unless I decided to stop expanding it and instead started cutting down scenes. So ”Aeon of Maat” was written for a scene that in the end wasn’t needed.

The song is totally lead vocal based, but has a lot of different vocal layers and require minimum 4 singers to be performed. The song it self doesn’t sound anything like the ”Secret of the Runes” album, but the way the vocal lines are layered, is in a similar way like how the choral parts were layered in some songs on that album. Like in the bridge in ”Nifelheim” for example.

One of the classical vocal lines was re-arranged into metal singing though. And I threw in some solos from Vidal as well, to make it a bit more rock n roll.
It’s a short song with only a 2:36 duration and structurally the song bear the traces of being written for a musical theatrical scene rather than a regular song. There are no regular verses. The intro riff continue into a sort of verse, but after that it it sounds like there are two choruses rather than a bridge and a chorus.
The guitar have a back ground role in the song, but goes down to B (or H as we call in in the Germanic system), so it’s written for baritone guitar, which gives a deep and powerful tone. Other songs where we used baritone guitars is the past are for example ”Mon Amour Mon Ami”, ”La Maritza” and ”Unguentum Sabbati”.

The song has some guest vocals from Erik Mårtensson (Eclipse). I was originally intending to ask L-G Petrov (R.I.P.) from Entombed to have a go on that part, but I wasn’t aware he had cancer. By the time I was about to contact him to see if he would be up for some guest vocals, I got struck by the news he had just died. That was very shocking saddening news. But just because it was now impossible to have L-G sing, I couldn’t get his voice out of my head for this part. I tried a few different singers doing something in that direction (including Thomas, the result you can hear as a bonus verion on the digipak), but it didn’t sound at all how I wanted. Then given how Erik had blown us away with the vocals on Pazuzu, I decided to have a go with him again. And… there it was!  Didn’t sound like L-G, more like Blackie Lawless in his younger days. Which was different from what I had intended, but it gave that same raw punch in the vocals I was wishing for.

All in all I think the song is a great example of how much of the music on Beloved Antichrist could have been transformed into regular Therion songs if given opportunity. Some day I’ll probably re-arrange some more of the scenes into regular metal and release.

Track 2: LITANY OF THE FALLEN

To me this is a song that is connecting all the three albums in the trilogy, as it has elements that could fit in each of them.
• The chorus is very melodic with a hit feeling that would fit on Leviathan I.
• The verse is darker and fit well on Leviathan II
• The theme (first riff that comes back and later ends the song) is proggy, especially at the end. That's more in line with Leviathan III.

I wrote the theme first, I still remember exactly how it happened. It was in the middle of the corona chaos and I was a bit fed up with all the overreactions and ”circus” going on. On Malta they had shut down the airport entirely, so we were stuck on the island. And it was forbidden to gather more than 3 people, even outside or in your own home. And you had to wear a mask even if you took a swim in the sea or walked alone in the country side - with a 3.000 EUR penalty. Meanwhile back in Sweden people would hug their friends and pack them selves into crowded busses and subways like usual with basically no one wearing a mask.
It shocked me how easy it was to get people hostile towards one another and how easy it was go get people to go along with anything dictated by the authorities. In many countries you’d be accused of ”trying to kill everyones parents” if you didn’t wear the mask right - while in Sweden they would mock you for being a ”scared fool” if you were one of the few people wearing a mask. In one country you’d be judged as an ”idiot who don’t believe in science” if you didn’t think masks works, in the other you would be called the same for claiming the opposite. On internet it was full blown war between people who where for or against lockdowns and restrictions. Total fucking circus…

In a moment of resignation after having finished the work of the day in my temporary studio set up, I sat and plinked some on the keyboard and kind of transformed my negative feeling toward humanity into a piano riff, which is the basic composition of the theme in Litany of the Fallen. I then extended it with some long chords and saved it on the computer under the working title ”Corona circus”.

Some days later I wondered what to do with it and sent it to Thomas to see if he thought we should use it for something. He liked it, so I then started to make a song out of it. First I changed the piano into organ. You can still hear that at 3:32 in the song, where I left the original as a break (with some timpani) with organ.
I continued to work on the song and thought the organ could be arranged into choir as well, giving it a sort of ”To Mega Therion” type of vibe with choir hits on top of muted guitar bumps followed by long chords, but with different time signatures.
I then wrote the verse, being inspired by both Jimi Hendrix and Alice Cooper. And some tiny Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project as well. By letting the choir follow the chords I got it to sound more spooky and by palm muting the guitar, it sounded less 70’s rock (people who don’t play instruments are SO easy to deceive, just play a guitar a bit chunky and pull up the distortion a bit and they will go ”it’s METAL!”).
Then I wrote a chorus, but I wasn’t entirely happy with it. Chords worked great, but vocal lines were too weak. So I sent it to Thomas and told him to do some Beatles/ABBA/Queen level of strong melodies with choral arrangement. Some day later I had it returned with some really nice choral arrangements and there the song was basically ready.

We could have used the song on Leviathan I, but I wanted to play around a bit with keyboards and orchestration at the end of the song. I was now so busy with recordings, that I felt it’s better to just let it be and do it after Leviathan I.

Track 3: ALCHEMY OF THE SOUL

Three of the songs on Leviathan II were not originally written for the Leviathan trilogy.
One of those songs has already been revealed in a previous post. Now it’s time for the next one.

One day I was calling Thomas about something and after we had talked a while the following conversation took place:
”You can NEVER guess what I’m doing these days!” Thomas said with a sly voice.
”What? Tell me!” I replied curiously.
”I’m writing songs to present to ALICE COOPER!” Thomas proclaimed.
”NO FUCKING WAY!!!” I shouted.
It turned out he had been invited to a song writing team by someone with an insight of that Alice was going to do a retro sounding album and as he is often using songwriters outside of the band, there would be a chance to write some suitable song and present.
Being a huge fan of old Cooper (it was even one of the influences going symphonic, the song ”Steven” for instance was one of the influences for the song writing in the Theli era), I was of course very curious and asked to hear something.

A while later I got some songs. They where good, but to me they sounded too modern, not like the early years of Cooper.
I’m normally not the type of guy who push my self on people, but this time I kind of put my leg inside the doorway and forced my self in and said to Thomas:
”Look! You and me together could write some better stuff than this and actually have a chance to get a song on there.”
So I dropped everything else and wrote 5 foundations for songs. 2 were too weak, but 3 had good riffs that I thought Thomas could work on with vocal melodies. Two of the songs turned out very good. I could absolutely see them being recorded by Alice and we made demos of those to present to him (a story to be continued in another post). The third song had a maybe too modern chorus though. The intro and verses could have been good melancholic 70’s rock, perfect for some sad story Cooper lyrics, but the chorus sounded more 80’s. Thomas said we should try to use it for Therion instead. And we have a veto for everyone in the band - if someone writes something and someone else in the band likes it and wants it for Therion, then this will be the case and we will at least try it out the Therion way.

So I took the song back and started to re-work it for Therion. And the result was ”Alchemy of the soul”. It’s a rather commercial song as it was intended for Alice Cooper, but I tried to arrange it so that you had some more melancholic tones and added some sad solo violin.
I first was contemplating a youth choir for it, but Hellscore managed to imitate a younger sound.
When I thought the song was ready, Thomas came up with a last minute idea to add some Beatles inspired vocal lines/harmonies in the post chorus which was one of the last things to be recorded for the album.

Essentially, this is soundwise more like when Therion is making cover song (except we wrote it this time), but I think it has some gloom and sadness in it and it deserved its place on the record. I think it will be one of those songs that the majority of the fans will not regard as one of the better songs on the album, but will be one of the fave songs of a minority with a different taste. At least that's what our pre-listening with friends and people at Nuclear Blast indicates.

Track 4: LUNAR COLOURED FIELDS

This is also a song that will divide the listeners. From the pre-listening some said this was the best song, others said it was the worst. I guess this song is appealing more to people with a bit of melancholy, or at least fascination of it. Which is maybe not so strange given the story behind the song.

One day I was reflecting on the fact that 6 people that I have met (3 of them I knew personally to different degrees) have committed suicide. When I was a teenager I never thought I would ever meet people who would end their lives, back then it was mainly people unhappy because of things happening to them in life that would take their lives out of despair. Very rare occasions where people who lost someone, were terminally ill or had ruined their lives with debts etc. would end life to sooner join with their loved ones or find a desperate way out of a blind alley in life.
But in our times, mental health conditions are on a totally different level from when I grew up. If it’s because of the change of society, the food we eat or toxins in the plastics in our toys we played with as kids, who knows? But it’s a fact. I have more than 10 friends who are taking or have previously eaten pills against depression and/or anxiety.
As far as I am aware, only one of those who committed suicide had tragedies in the life that you can understand caused a permanent depression and unhappiness. For all the others it seems to be mainly a bio-chemical imbalance that cause their sadness. All of them are intelligent people and many of them would become interested in psychology and/or occultism in order to try to decipher the mysteries of the mind and obtain something better in life than just being given a jar of pills, which is more or less mandatory these days.

When we wrote the music for Beloved Antichrist I had to learn how to write music to a specific scene. Write for the voices of the characters that sing in that scene and make music that is suitable for the mood in what is happening on stage. Write music for a specific emotion, not just a song.
So I tried to use this newly gained ability to try to channel the sadness that I have seen in some of these people and how some of them has described it. And try to transform that feeling into some kind of music. That resulted in the intro, verse and chorus of Lunar Coloured Fields. 
Then I wrote a break as well, representing the despair I’ve seen in the eyes of some them. They are very intelligent and understand that they have no earthly reasons to feel bad. They all have friends, nice partners/families, most of them have good jobs they like. They all know there really shouldn’t be any logical reason at all for them to feel depressed - but they still do. So that break illustrate the impuissance and panic about not having any way out and just have to live with this yoke on their shoulders forever. This is the part that is first instrumental, but later returns with the choir chanting ”Lunar coloured fields” (in 9 days you will know what part).
And finally I wrote one more part of the song, which I’m not sure how to label in song structure terms. I guess ”post-chorus” would be somewhat accurate. Here I tried to make some contrast to the sad parts and make some music that is more bombastic and is a small tribute to those who feel like shit every morning, but still get out of bed and soldier on with their lives. This piece of music is both written in tribute to them as well as a requiem (not to be confused with a Requiem Mass) for the fallen ones who gave up.

DISCLAIMER:  I HATE artists who think they can ”save the world” with their music. So no need for any smarty pants to be high and mighty about that. Songs are no more than entertainment, but when feeling low, such can still give you great comfort.
I also can’t stand fans who make up fake stories of how ”I was going to kill my self, but then I heard you guitar solo and decided to live” to have something impressive to say to artists.
I also hate occult posers (who may complain Therion did a song with a theme not being occult or mystic). These people should be aware that in no other community have I met more people that this song speaks to than in the occult community.

Track 5: LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE

After the gloomy previous track, I felt this song belonged as a track to clear the gloom. It’s not a happy track at all, but it’s uptempo and has a more energy filling vibe. It could style wise have been on Leviathan III, because it’s pretty original and a bit of an odd song in a way. But I feel it’s connected to the previous song, it simply had to be the next track. So I swapped it with another track.

Imagine that some time in the early 90’s Piggy (R.I.P.) from Voivod, one of the Slayer guitarists, Björn and Benny from ABBA and Jake E Lee (ex. Ozzy) ended up in the same place and they decided to write a song together. Then Brian May and a 21 year old me popped by and made some contributions.
That would give you some hints about the influences and inspirations for this song. In this song I have actually recycled aone of my melodies from the old death metal days that I thought deserved a better fate than being on an old underground death metal album few listens to.

In this song you have some brutal vocal duet between Chris Davidsson (Majestica) who is our live bassist and Noa Gruman (Scardust) who is the head of the Hellscore choir. They are singing different lyrics in each speaker, maying a brutal version of the multi layer type of vocals I mentioned in a previous post. Chris also sing with a clean voice in the verses.

Christian Vidal did an amazing guitar solo at the end of the song, which is along with the solo of ”Typhon” my fave Therion guitar solo. I liked it so much that I had the choir sing a long with a part of it.
There are a lot of things going on in the back of the sound in this song, with guitars doing a some sneaky melodies in some places. It’s one of those songs you should listen to a few times with head phones to discover all the components.
This isn’t gonna be one of the hit songs and I doubt it will ever be played live, but I think it’s a great album song that gives Leviathan II a wider musical spectrum.

Продолжаю выкладывать комментарии Криса к песням с нового альбома. Это будет вторым из серии трех постов.

Track 6: MARIJIN MIN NAR

Christian Vidal isn’t the most productive song writer in Therion, but when we write something, it’s usually something very good!
One day I got a demo from him with a song with keyboards that sounded like a computer game I played a bit in the 90’s. It was a car game and one of the racetracks were in a desert and they had middle eastern music playing. Don’t remember what the game was called, but I like when I get demos where there is a lot left for interpretation and it’s not too ”ready”. It sparks the imagination and give better ideas, at least to me.
I instantly took a like to it from the first listening, but it felt it didn’t have a proper chorus. What is today the bridge, was chorus in the original. So I told this to him and sent some chords as example how it could develop. Some days later I got back a version with a chorus that had some lovely choral arrangements, displayed by some humming Argentinian voice with a broad vibrato. I knew this song would turn out great!

We always exchange opinions about the parts and arrangements, but in my role as a producer it’s often my task to get the most out of the songs and also compress them into formats that will fit the minds of more people. In this case the song had TWO guitar solos and I thought it was too long at the end.
So I cut it down and decided to play back the first solo over the last bridge instead of having it on it’s own afterwards. Vidal had doubts about that, to have a guitar solo at the same time as the choir was singing. He thought it would be difficult for the listener to know what to focus on. In a way he has an obvious point, it DOES make that part harder to listen to. But that never stopped people from enjoying for example the bridge in Nifelheim that has 3 different vocal lines counteracting. Or the chorus in Tuonela that has two overlapping vocals and a lead solo violin part counteracting the main vocals. It’s a bit of a the trademark of Therion to do that once in a while. To me it sounds PASSIONATE with the solo over it, it makes it sound so much bigger in my ears. The focus is on the solo and the choir work like chords enhancing it. I decided to pan the guitar to the left to have it a bit segmented in the audio picture though.

It was the theme part of the song that had reminded me about that computer game. For that type of melody you have to choose your instrument or sound carefully, not to make everyone else think about a 90’s computer game as well. So I opted to try with solo violin, which was brilliantly performed by Ally Storch again. She did a few variations and in one she had added this glissando that was an insanely brilliant detail, which got even better when I put two takes over each other to make it stereo, creating a lovely chorus effect as well. Then I asked Vidal to add a guitar following the glissando with a bend on the guitar. We tried both an octave below and unison. It sounded brilliant with the octave and that part got twice as good as I had hoped for. The third time, right before the solo, we also used the unison guitar to make it a bit fatter.
Sometimes you just have pure luck in the production, you have an idea and it turns out great and leads to something else and in the end some part you though was good becomes very good.

For the end of the song Vidal wanted to have a second solo and I encouraged him to do some ”Arabic schredding”. In fact it is Persian scale, as Arabic scales use quarter notes (crotchets), but we internally always call it ”Arabic” anyway. And what a cool solo he delivered! One of my fave Therion solos.
The overdubbing technique we used for the choir in the verse and chorus of this song got a more 80’s sound than 70’s. Sounds more Starship and 80’s electro pop than ABBA sound wise. It creates a wonderful bizarre feeling which blends perfect in some weird way with the Middle Eastern vibe. It’s like mixing an early 80’s science fiction movie with ”Lawrence of Arabia”.

Track 7: HADES AND ELYSIUM

I’m not a big fan of Björk in general. I have huge respect for her as an artist and so on, but it’s just not my cup of tea. But her song ”Bachelorette”…  I just LOVE that specific song! That gloomy piano and the dark atmosphere in combination with the strong vocal melodies. That is one of the inspirations in this song that me and Thomas wrote together. Especially the piano.

The verses are like a ballad, the rest is like a gloomy mid tempo dark gothic symphonic pop song. The post chorus is a contrast with major chords and angelic choirs and emotional sweet vocals. But there is still something sad also in the sweeter part. ”Happy” melancholy? Like the music in some movie when someone dies and goes to heaven or something I guess.

The song is full of mellotron, harpsichord and analoge vintage keyboards, which is an essential part in creating the sad atmosphere. So quite 70’s in that regard. The composition sounds more timeless though, could have been done back in the days or be modern. Lori, Taida and Thomas takes turns in trying to bring the mood into melancholy. It does NOT sound like Clavicula Nox, but to me it has the same type of gloom. The same type of invitation to escapism, to put on the headphones, play it and just disappear from the troubles of the mundane world for a little while.

This is one of the few songs that got its real title from scratch, as it reflects the contrasts in the music between sad and brighter mood. Most of the time, it’s an open topic what the lyrics should be about, but in some cases the song seems to name it self from the very start.
Original drums was recorded by Snowy, but was re-recorded by Björn Höglund.

There are not many guitars in this song, so I guess the ”beer and heavy metal in my veins”-crowd won’t hold this as their fave track. But I predict it will all in all be one of the more popular songs on the album.

Track 8: MIDNIGHT STAR

This song was very tricky to get right. First Björn Höglund had to re-record Snowys drums. Then we did several versions in different tempos, because I didn’t find the right swing. It is a very simple song, but sometimes it’s just very hard to get the details and the over all feeling the way you want. When I hear it I can still feel we should have changed the tempo some bpm in this or that direction. This was the hardest song to record in decades.

This is a guitar based song.
The verse is a shuffle with inspiration both from Uriah Heep and WASP with some dramatic soprano from Chiara.
The chorus is a bit of a nod to Tony Iommy, an uptempo doom piece with Thomas showing some tougher voice than normal.
The break has some Metallica influences, but not from any song or album that you would expect. I always thought their album ”Load” was shamefully underrated. I can agree it’s maybe not a good Metallica album, but it’s a great album. I didn’t like the ”Re-Load” too much though. So there’s some ”Load” influences, but I don’t think anyone would have noticed if I didn’t mention it.

Then there is the second half of the song, where it shifts to gothic gloom and sadness. The song has a slavic theme and you can hear some slavic folk music influences, sang by a 71 (!) people strong male choir. To put things in perspective, when we recorded Lemuria and Sirius B and had 170 people involved in the recordings, the choir was ”only” consisting of 32 people. So it’s quite massive. But I didn’t use it to create some huge boom effect, I wanted the massive sound in a more melancholic way, both inspired and recorded in the same way as some of my strong early influences that lead me to start loving the sound of choir.

PS - отвечая на вопрос о тексте "Midnight Star", Крис сказал, что он основан на персонаже по имени Зоря Полуночная из романа Нила Геймана "Американские боги". Так что это будет уже вторая песня в этом году по этому произведению.

Последняя тройка комментариев Криса:

Track 9: CAVERN COLD AS ICE

This is basically ABBA goes dark gothic metal. Thomas send me a song that sounded like dark ABBA and I took out the baritone guitar, added some small things and re-arranged it into a Therion song. The early 80’s keyboard on his demo became a flute.

We actually spoke about asking Agneta, Frida and Björn do to guest vocals. We though, ”It’s a chance in a million that one of them will do it and less than a chance in a billion that they all will say yes, but what do we have to loose to ask?”. But right after that they announced ABBA would reunite and do a record, so then the chance decreased to one in a trillion anyone even would pick up the phone, so we decided to just have Rosa and Thomas do the vocals instead.

This song is very typical for Leviathan II in the way that it’s both sweet and dark at the same time. It’s like ”Son of the Son” meets the sadness of ”Lemuria”.
I’m sure this is a hit song in terms of composition. I’m sure it would have done well if it was performed by a pop artist. If it’s Therion hit song will be up to you guys to judge.

Track 10: CODEX GIGAS

One day I was pondering about Doom Metal. By that I mean ”Epic Doom Metal”, like Candelmass play. I don’t listen to other types of doom and don’t even know all the labels.
I’m a huge fan of Candlemass and was wondering if it’s a more difficult music style to write a hit song in than say heavy metal or symphonic metal. So I decided to have a go with it. Armed with Thomas Vikström at my side (who also happens to have a history of being a singer in Candlemass back in the days) we took on the task and the result was Codex Gigas (the name is of course a nod to Candlemass). I wrote the riffs and the vocal melodies in the verse and Thomas wrote the other vocal melodies.
He also wrote the orchestration (performed with mellotron) in the intro, I was originally planning to have it just guitars, more pure doom. So I guess the end result was ”epic symphonic doom”.

When we wrote it, we were "only" having enough songs for two albums, so I though it would end up on what is now Leviathan III, but as the pile of songs grew, I thought it suited better on this album.
If it’s a hit or not will be up to you guys to decide. But I estimate it to be one of the more popular songs on the album at least.

Track 11: PAZUZU

So we had two songs written for Alice Cooper and when we didn’t hear back from the guy making the original writing team, Thomas tried to send the songs via one of the guitar players and when that didn’t lead to anything, I sent them to the producer Bob Ezrin. But we didn’t hear back from anyone. We were too late for the ”Detroit Stories” retro album, so maybe that was the problem, they don’t need more retro material. Or they just didn’t like the songs. I guess we’ll never know.

But fact is that it doesn’t matter. Being a massive fan of early Cooper, I would have fucking taken the CD with me in the casket when I die if Alice Cooper made a retro album and I was writing a song for it. But on the other hand, if we wouldn’t have had this idea to write songs for Cooper, we would never had written those great songs.
One of the songs is too rock n’ roll to therionize in a good way, so this one I think we’ll leave for the next LLO album.
But the second song was a sad song we could transform into Therion. The original was meant as a continuation of the 1971 Cooper song ”Dead Babies”. It’s a sad story about… wait why am I explaining that? If you’re not familiar with the song, then kindly:
1. Locate the lyrics and listen to the song. And use some decent speakers or headphones, not your 49,95 bucks USB computer speakers from Amazon.
2. Go into the shower, lay down in fetal position and cry for an hour while contemplating having lived your entire life without hearing this song.

Now back to our song… We wanted to do a kind of ”Dead Babies, part II”. Naturally not as awesome and genius as the remarkable original, but still kick ass. Lyrically we had a demo lyric continuing the story. Betty’s mother was long dead and gone and her father was now on his death bed, full of remorse and afraid of the afterlife. Then the ghost of Betty arrives in the night and he tries to ask for forgiveness. But it ends with him dying and Betty leading him to Hell ”to meet Mommy”. We of course understood Cooper would have written new words if the song would have been accepted, but I think it’s not a bad concept.
Musically we didn’t want to try to write in a copying direction, but to the best of our abilities in a style that is somewhat similar to the ”Killer” album (in my opinion their best album).

When the song got rejected (or actually we don’t even know for sure that Alice have heard it, maybe it was stopped already by the gates), I was totally stuck with Alice voice singing the vocal lines, so I decided to keep the riffs and write new ones. After doing that, I still was kind of puzzled to what I wanted vocal wise. In the verse I had made it easy by simply arranging a choir singing along with the guitar chords. We did some recordings trying out opera versions with Lori and other variations for the rest of the song, but I wasn’t happy. Finally we had a go with Erik Mårtensson and he TOTALLY blew us away!  But the chorus didn’t feel like it sounded Therion somehow. So I decided to keep searching voices for the chorus and kept Erik for the bridge. In the end it was a combination of Thomas and Rosa that worked the best. But we thought it would have been an insane waste, not to let anyone hear the version with Erik’s chorus, so we decided to release it as a bonus track and call it AOR-version as that’s how it sounds to me.
I also realised that there was a tiny thing in the chords that was disturbing me and we made a last min change to the guitars and finally we had nailed the song.

Ну, и уже не от Криса, а от меня пара рецензий на альбом:

https://www.metalinside.ch/2022/10/therion-leviathan-ii-review/ (9,5 из 10)
http://musipediaofmetal.blogspot.com/2022/10/reviews-therion-banco-del-mutuo.html (9 из 10)
https://thedarkmelody.com/therion-leviathan-ii-album-review/ (8,4 из 10)
http://www.musikreviews.de/reviews/2022/Therion/Leviathan-II/ (12 из 15)
https://metalstorm.net/pub/review.php?review_id=17963 (7,5 из 10)
https://www.metal.de/reviews/therion-leviathan-ii-461034/ (7 из 10)

Засрали всю тему, перевели бы хоть

В целом чуть слабее предыдущего, но это и ожидалось, учитывая ориентиры. Ярких вещей вроде "Tuonela" или "Nocturnal Light" при первом прогоне выделить не удалось. Видаль действительно приятно удивил в этот раз, как и русскоязычный фрагмент в "Midnight Star". Первое впечатление - ровная "добротная" работа на классе. Буду потихоньку расслушивать и ждать самый многообещающий для меня третий том.

По первым ощущениям первая часть и мне тоже чуть больше понравилась, но вторая мне показалась более разноплановой. Первые два сингла, как я и подозревал, оказались самыми слабыми песнями, самое вкусное как раз между ними. На этом альбоме, как и на "Les Fleurs du Mal", явно доминирует женский вокал (это для меня ни плюс, ни минус, просто наблюдение). Видаль и вправду разыгрался и выдал несколько очень классных соло, например "арабский шред" на уже знакомой "Marijin Min Nar" или мелодичные трели в конце "Lucifuge Rofocale". Сходу запомнилась фирменная полифония в "Aeon of Maat", "Alchemy of the Soul", ABBA-подобная "Cavern Cold As Ice" и, наконец, грандиозный припев "Codex Gigas".

русскоязычный фрагмент в "Midnight Star"

Крис сказал, что его исполнил "Red Army choir", но я не уверен, имел ли он в виду хор имени Александрова или ансамбль МВД, поскольку они оба так называют себя на английском.

upd: нашел еще парочку рецензий.

https://www.metalfan.nl/reviews.php?id=12270 (83 из 100)
https://www.allmusic.com/album/leviathan-ii-mw0003797444 (3,5 из 5)
https://wonderboxmetal.com/2022/10/28/therion-leviathan-ii-review/#more-52621 (без оценки, но "highly recommended")

Новый альбом понравился.

Новый альбом понравился.

харе тут говно всякое толкать, не на рынке

Новости от Криса:

1) "Leviathan III" сведен, а дата его выхода будет объявлена в конце месяца. По мнению тех, кто его уже прослушал (не считая самой группы), это сильнейшая часть трилогии.
2) На концерте, который пройдет в Мехико 20 января следующего года, Therion впервые за 15 лет выступят с оркестром. Более того, поскольку Кьяра сейчас находится в декрете, ее на концерте заменит не кто иная, как Лори.
3) Группа перешла с Nuclear Blast на Napalm Records.

А вот и первый сингл подоспел - "Twilight of the Gods" с Матсом.

Сам альбом выйдет 15 декабря.