Therion Sweden
"This is the meterstick by which all terrible albums will be measured. At this time in their history, Therion were just an average death metal outfit complete with a name that is merely tribute to a black metal album. The compositions on Of Darkness... are bland and uninspired, and the production is painfully bad for we audiophiles (the bass can hardly be heard, which doesn't really matter since it's not worth hearing). I would recommend listening to this one after your favorite band releases a bad album: you can always take solace that "at least it's not Of Darkness...""
"After the first listen, I found this album quite disappointing compared to "Sirius B". But after more listens I started to enjoy it... it's not a bad album, it's simply different from the previous releases.
In fact the main contributor to the orchestral feeling of previous Therion albums (Christofer Johnsson) did participate less in the songwriting. With the addition of more traditional vocalists (power metal singer Mats Leven, ex-King Diamond/Mercyful Fate drummer Snowy Shaw and two new female vocalists), the result sounds more "metal" and less symphonic. Orchestrations and classical singers are still used, just less..."
"This is a quite decent album, but somehow the songwriting leaves me cold. It's also quite ordinarily structured, with songs mainly consisting of verse/chorus sections with alternating moods (usually power metal/male metal shouting vocals vs. symphonic power metal/female and male operatic vocals both in choir arrangements and solo). Harmonically it's quite tame, using chord progressions well known from other symphonic metal bands like Rhapsody and Nightwish, and of course also Therion's previous albums. Instrumentation is quite reduced compared to other symphonic metal albums - they're essentially just using drums, bass, guitars and vocal arrangements, keyboards and orchestra instruments are rarely used except for intros, outros and short interludes.
I'd definitely recommend their 2007 album Gothic Kabbalah instead of this one, but if you're a fan especially of Therion's early albums you'll also enjoy this one as well."
"The development of Therion is clear, Vovin is well-placed between Theli and Deggial: It is one step more away from metal and one step further to being completely opera/classical oriented. Technically it's a bit better than Theli, allthough I regret the exclusion of the more uptempo parts of Theli. The high female voices are especially beautiful on this album and resemble "Siren of the Woods" of Theli"
"Here Therion leave the path of "doom metal" completely. This album is totally opera/classical oriented. The vocals are totally classical, except one song (Flesh of the Gods). Some tracks are 100% classical, with (almost) no rock influence. I cannot classify this album as any form of "metal", the closest I can get is "Gothic Rock" but it should be "Opera Rock"."
"My apologies to all Therion fans out there - I don't mean to be rude. But there are so many albums out there that are simple one or two magnitudes better than this. Still, you have to give them some credits for being the first band to combine classical music and metal ... theoretically Malmsteen was first by inventing neoclassical metal, but Therion go one step further and introduce operatic vocals, choirs and orchestral instrumentation (sparsely and simulated by keyboards/synthesizers, but it's there)."
"A mediocre album ... any Rhapsody album is at least 10x better in terms of musicianship and proper implementation of classical music. There are also many metal bands which are generally considered to be less progressive, for example Blind Guardian, who do a much better job than Therion. It's hard to believe that this is even considered to be one of their better albums ..."
