Therion - Vovin
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Free Music Notes for Vovin
Free Music Review: Enjoyable
Hit: 4 Stars
This is Therions top selling album. Not because it's the best either. But because it is something that just about anyone can listen to. The songs get stuck in your head very easily.
The lyrics are much weaker than the new albums, also the music is much simpler and the playing is not as impressive. But the songs are haunting, and relaxing to a point.
You have basic Gothic Metal (not very metal-like more of a relaxing type rock) style playing with haunting female vocals singing about religion and the occult.
I get bored with this album rather quickly but it its something that you could play around other people and I doubt few people would have any objections listening to it.
Free Music Review: Solid symphonic metal from a distance
Hit: 3 Stars
Lushly orchestrated metal including all the operatic fixings guide this worthy introduction into some of the genres more accessible work. While Therion have certainly sounded fresher, the predictable songwriting still has it's moments of gothic splendor, punctuating their classical inspirations through the overproduced, mundane generalities. While lackluster rhythms tend to dominate, when this bands vision of unifying their metal and classical tendencies do come together it makes for a worthwhile excursion.Free Music Review: "A'arab Zaraq fly in ecstacy"
Hit: 4 Stars
That is the last line of the last song, Raven of Dispersion. According to Wikipedia, A'arab Zaraq translates (from Hebrew) as The Ravens of Dispersion which are hideous demons with raven heads, and having some base in Judaism. The first song also obviously involves Judaism. The other songs involve other early religions; examples being Greek/Roman (Birth of Venus), Minoan (The Wild Hunt) and Hinduism (Eye of Shiva). Draconian Trilogy concerns Typhon, the 100 headed dragon who is featured in the first song of the Lemuria CD. This being my third Therion production, I think I am beginning to see a common thread among their works. All, or at least the recent ones, seem to be focused on religions, mostly ancient ones. And not surprisingly, the music is similar also, being operatic vocals backed by power metal, or power opera to use my term. This CD has "only" one male and two female solo vocalists, an eight member choir and a string quintet, but that, along with the guitars, keyboard and drums, is enough to make plenty of beautiful music. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that some of the songs are a little too slow for my taste, but that doesn't mean they aren't beautiful. (Please see my profile for a brief discussion of my rating philosophy.)Free Music Review: It grows on you
Hit: 5 Stars
When I first heard this album I didn't like it. I knew it was good music, it just didn't hit me the way Theli did. I was looking for more of the same. I hate people that talk about themselves in reviews, But I'm going do it because this album is so special. It deserves that kind of perspective.
When I first bought it, I lived in a big house in the woods and was just blasting thrash constantly on a ridiculous sound system. I literally scared away all the wildlife from anywhere near my house. That's the mode I was in at the time and that's why Theli didn't grab me. I acknowledged it was a good album but shelved it, only pulling it when I was trying to get laid but it didn't really do anything for the Alabama girls I was using it on ( I later learned that european and some asian girls do appreciate it)
A couple years later I hit bottom and found myself living a 12 square foot transient hotel in NJ with nothing but junkies and roaches for neighbors. I had no money, a fairly advanced case of Lyme disease and a broken hand I couldn't afford to stop working long enough to let heal. Everything I owned had either been broken, stolen or lost somehow. Vovin was one of few cd's nobody bothered to steal from me. For one horrible winter I listened to it constantly on a really bad bookcase stereo. Broke, hungry, lonely, in constant physical and spiritual pain - no heat and a broken window in a NJ winter - this album literally carried me through one of the darkest periods in my life. At the time it seemed very morose, with just a touch of spiritual upliftedness. I connected to the darker mood and escaped at the more uplifting points.
Now, years later again, I see it quite the opposite. I now live on a tropical island, have recovered from my physical ailments and once again have a ridiculous sound system to listen to my music on, this time watching the sun rise and set on a beautiful south pacific lagoon without a single care in the world. Vovin continues to stir emotion, although now it sounds to me very uplifting, at times triumphant, with only a touch of the morose.
It's amazing how some pieces of music can encompass such a wide range of often-conflicting emotions and allow the listener to zero in on the ones that dominate his or her life at the time. Vovin is one such album, you hear in it what you want or need to hear. because the lyrics are so ethereal, they make no literal connection to any normal person's daily life, hence the power of the music. it's all in the mood and the tone, you are never led into the artist's problems or experiences, unlike most common albums. It leaves you free to enloy your own, or wallow in them, as your mood and need suits you, and your experience of the music will definitely change with the circumstances in your life.
I think the final testament to how much I love this album is the fact that I now have over 1400 albums digitized and at my disposal, by remote control, and I still keep returning to this one. Even though I could easily change it to any of 1400 other albums at any time, I play it to the end every time. I do tend to start it at track 2 though. Track 1 is kind of a jarring start, albums comes off smoother if you skip it.
I'll leave the musical critique to other here, did it better than i could anyway. i just wanted to talk about the emotional impact.
Free Music Review: Therion incorporates a real symphony - majestic
Hit: 4 Stars
Songwriter Christofer Johnsson must have dwelled endlessly on how to follow-up the genre-shattering Theli, Therion's previous gothic-metal release. For starters, Vovin incorporates real strings and horns, a step up from the synthesized (yet extremely effective) orchestra of Theli. Secondly, the songs are, on average, shorter. Third, the choirs are given much more album time, and single vocalists are rare ("The Wild Hunt" being Vovin's only example). The album has all the elements that characterized Theli and more: epic choirs, hard-hitting riffs, and symphonic passages. However, the album is far from its predecessor. Several of the songs are, to be blunt, forgettable. Johnsson has found an effective song-crafting formula, but unfortunately for this album, stuck to it with little innovation for several tracks (namely the opener "The Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah" and "Eye of Shiva"). The outstanding tracks are those who refine the formula. "Wine of Aluqah" is extremely rapid and uses choirs to apocalyptic ends, giving the song a doom-filled mood that ends with the album's triumphant finale. "Black Sun-Draconian Trilogy" uses a foreboding piano-line surrounded by gothic orchestration to create a truly memorable song. "The Birth of Venus Illegitima" has just enough female operatic singers to make the song almost seductive. The album is not without its great selections - but unlike Theli and Therion's future releases, it was not without its undistinguished tracks, predictable and easily forgettable. Still, for any fan of Therion, a must-have - the band's first step into genuine orchestration.
See also: Therion - Theli, Therion - Deggial