#jori sjooros

[rikirachtman]

Thergothon - Stream From the Heavens (1994) review

When not busy naming his cats after racial slurs and seeing how many consonants he could string together without any vowels, H.P. Lovecraft wrote a great deal of books; Lovecraft’s stories, and the imagery conjured up therein, is the very essence of “Stream From the Heavens”. A short-lived doom metal outfit from Finland, Thergothon existed for a mere four years and recorded just three demo tapes, only one of which was ever officially released, as well as one full-length before their break-up. However, despite their microscopic discography (every second of their existing material takes barely more than an hour to listen to!), Thergothon made a massive impact with their haunting and utterly dismal soundscapes, helping to pioneer the infamously inaccessible genre of funeral doom (which is like, the doom metal of doom metal, basically).

Now, the word “inaccessible” is thrown around often, but it’s truly warranted here: Thergothon is not a band many will enjoy upon first listen. Save for a few mid-paced moments here and there, nearly every moment of this album is hellishly, ungodly slow, crawling along at an average of around 20 beats per minute(!!!!!) as heavy chords ring from the guitars for multiple measures at a time and the drums trudge methodically along at the speed of the guy in front of you in line trying to decide what he wants to order. Entire sections of a song can change subtly without the listener knowing, simply because it moves at a pace too slow to fully comprehend half the time, and in rare moments where the flow of the music does change abruptly, like the medieval-inspired acoustic section from “The Unknown Kadath in the Cold Wastes” or the galloping mid-paced solo in “Elemental”, they become even more shocking for this reason. The power chords that usually make up the meat of these songs often shift in very atonal, alien ways, tending to hit the note you’d least expect to follow the preceding one. Upon first listen, I almost found it irritating that Thergothon seemed to intentionally choose chord progressions that didn’t quite sound right, but as time goes on, it becomes more apparent to me that this unorthodox writing style is exactly what helps them uphold the alien, otherworldly aura that drives their music in the first place. Lovecraft probably would have hated music theory anyway, right?

“Stream From the Heavens” is far from a clinic in technical ability, but each band member performs adequately. The vocals, although they stay mostly in the background, still play a huge role and are hard to ignore, as vocalist Niko Sirkiä employs hideously guttural, positively inhuman growls that bring to mind images of colossal behemoths from unknown reaches of the universe (or just a fat guy burping honestly), blending them with distant, forlorn clean vocals that add another layer to the lonely, isolating atmosphere of this record. I’ve often heard black metal vocals described as “the shrieks of suffering, tortured souls” or whatever cliche seems appropriate, and if that’s the case, then Sirkiä’s vocals are more akin to a being that has long since undergone its torture and now wanders empty planes as more of a husk than a human. Foreshadowing his unfortunate shift to electronic music in later years, Sirkiä also plays an eerie keyboard throughout the album with a spindly, sci-fi-esque tone that plays off the heavier instruments surrounding it tremendously. [Quick note here: After writing this review, I found out that Sirkiä was only 17 or 18 during the record of this album, and even younger when their demo was released. These big fuck-off monster growls are coming out of a teenager!]

Guitarist Mikko Ruotsalainen and drummer Jori Sjöroos (Finnish names are hard, man) are the perfect pair to back up Sirkiä as they don’t do much beyond hammer out a single note every two measures or so before moving on to the next. This may sound like a bad thing, but arrangements any more complex than that would spoil the unceasingly bleak atmosphere that covers this record like horrible Cthulhu slime, and the intermittent moments of emptiness in between only further serve to reinvigorate the slime (no more slime metaphors for now). There is no bassist credited for this album, and frankly I’m unable to hear a bass through the production as it is, so I presume either Sirkiä or Ruotsalainen played it and buried it in the mix, a mime played it, Jason Newsted played it, or it’s just not there at all.

Speaking of production...oyyy fuckin’ vey. Spotless Rush-tier production would not have suited this album, but a bit of cleaning up would at least stop me from having to clean blood out of my ears with every cymbal crash. The instruments, in a rare subversion for doom metal, are actually very thin-sounding rather than heavy or crunchy, with pitter-pattering drums and wispy, flanger-drenched guitars (I can hear the “flange” shifting between my headphones on this album sometimes and it drives me insane but I digress) that act as a softer background to the more powerful growled vocals. Although the poor production can sometimes detract from the guitar and drum work, it makes the keyboard sound even more delightfully eerie and it makes Sirkiä’s empty clean vocals that much more distant and haunting, so it certainly doesn’t come without its positives.

All in all, “Stream from the Heavens”, and indeed funeral doom in general, is very much an acquired taste, and very much “mood music” that can only be fully understood when in the correct emotional state for it. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they were already deep into metal as a genre, but for those who are, Thergothon’s only release is a deeply inaccessible piece of non-Euclidean musical geometry that probably won’t make much sense unless listened to under the right circumstances. There is an eldritch magic hidden in this record that can be unlocked with the right ear for it, and the right ear for this deranged and mysterious group of Finnish teenagers. Just, y‘know, try to forget that Niko basically went on to make Pitbull music after this, and the mystique doesn’t go away

“The powers of the sea, the wind and the fire, can you hear my chant?”