Draconian

And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… Almost five years after their sixth long-player "Sovran", DRACONIAN once again cast their breathtaking veil of melancholy over the world. This second full-length release featuring singer Heike Langhans delivers a captivating mélange of dreary doom and contrasty vocals and mixes Heike's angelic female voice with Anders Jakobsson's death growls. The one-hour long album, graced with haunting cover artwork by Natalia Drepina, is carrying the legacy of gothic doom metal à la My Dying Bride or Trees Of Eternity into the new decade and will drag the listener into a sorrowful cosmos right with the first notes of the spellbinding opener "Sorrow Of Sophia" that interweaves beauty with crippling depression. After crushing slow rhythms and the fragile "Sleepwalkers" that leads through barren soundscapes, the band - founded in Säffle / Sweden in 1994 – rises up to their best in the nine-minute long "Ascend Into Darkness", which will echo in the listener's ears long after the final chord has died away.

Hailed as ‘The European Metallica’, the 1995 masterpiece solidified the British band’s position at the top table of British metal. With some success already in the bag, the band’s rising status allowed them to deliver their most accomplished sound to date, and a collection of songs that are magnificently heavy, but with a cool, gothic sheen. It remains Paradise Lost’s most acclaimed and adored body of work, and era of the band. The CD also sees the band open their vaults and provide a version that comes with an extra disc of bonus and rare, unreleased material from the Draconian Times era. The 25th Anniversary edition features the re-mastered mix of 2011’s Legacy CD. It also comes furnished with new liner notes from journalist and long standing fan Nick Ruskell, a never seen before deep dive into the record’s lyrics and themes from vocalist Nick Holmes, and memories from the band.

Given that Vovin sees yet another round of major changes in the Therion lineup, it's remarkable how consistent frontman Christofer Johnsson's vision remains from record to record. Cut with a symphony choir, this outing continues in the vein of the prior Theli, offering a rich and majestic sound a cut above the genre norm.