Tribute albums usually go one of two ways, with rarely any middle ground. They’re either full of bands that you’ve never heard of with dubious renditions of classic material, or packed with true gems from greats of the scene. Thankfully, this tribute to Thergothon is one of the latter.
Thergothon were of course, one of, if not THE originators of Funeral doom. Crawling from the bottom of one of Finland’s great lakes like Cthulu, most fans didn’t ‘get’ their slow, crushing approach of doom and death metal at the time the band were still in existence and were often passed by. Since, of course, the genre has flourished (especially in the Finnish scene), and the protégés of Thergothon have arisen from their great slumbers to pay tribute to the kings.
This epic double CD tribute album contains covers from the likes of Asunder, Worship, Officium Triste, Evoken, Mournful Congregation et al, as well as a few curveballs from bands who usually play difference styles, such as Krohm and Axis of Advance. As Thergothon only had a handful of tracks to cover (they released a couple of demos and one single full length release during their time), a few tracks are covered more than once over the 17 tracks of the album, and it’s interesting to compare different bands covers against each other (although to be fair, most of the covers are pretty faithful representations of the originals, with differences mainly coming in the varying guitar tones or vocal approaches).
Apparently this album has been 2 years in the making, going through somewhat of an epic Lovecraftian journey of it’s own before coming into fruition. However, it was well worth the wait. The bands involved have painstakingly poured over the songs and it is obvious that they wanted to put their best into each second of every track to truly pay homage, and to keep the aching, mystical feeling of the originals intact. My personal favourites are the contrasts between the covers of “Evoken” by Nojda, which is twisted even more so into a ritualistic masterpiece, and also by Worship who figuratively bend time itself with the dry, intense heaviness of their version.
For fans of Funeral Doom, this is going to be a must buy. It’s as simple as that – it really is a no-brainer. A long awaited drooling beast of a tribute to the great Thergothon. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
http://www.myspace.com/thergothon
