Therion: A band Review

CURRENT NAME: Therion
FORMER NAMES: Blitzkrieg Megatherion
ORIGIN: Stockholm, Stockholms Län, Sweden
STATUS: Active
FORMED IN: 1987
LABEL: Nuclear Blast
GENRE: Metal
STYLE: Symphonic; Operatic






This is one of the best metal bands ever and also happen to originate from Sweden . In 1987 Christofer Johnsson formed a band called Blitzkrieg. The band later changed their name to Megatherion and finally Therion and managed to get a record deal with the German metal label Nuclear Blast. Over the years the band has released nine full-length albums and the members of the band has changed several times. The true genius behind it all and undoubtedly the most important member of the band is Christofer himself - he writes all the music, plays guitar, hammond organ and keyboards as well as used to do the vocals. There aren't many musicians with the skill of this man in the world today but hopefully there will be more bands like Therion to erupt from this planet in the future. The first four albums are musically in death metal style but the band still developed all the time, adding new elements to their music for each new release - clean male vocals, arabic folk music, classic music and industrial. Their fifth album called Theli was very different from their first ones - Christofer finally had the budget to do the kind of album he had been dreaming of doing for years but didn't have the possibility to record it until now.

Therion had now become an operatic and symphonic metal band - mixing melodic Iron Maiden influenced metal with classical music composed by Christofer himself and with clear male and female choirs doing much of the vocals together with Christofer Johnson. You can hear the beginning of this development already on the Lepaca Kliffoth album but the difference in quality if you compare this with Theli is unbelievable. Since then they have continued in the same direction of opera metal. On these later albums Christofer has hired world class session musicians to play all kinds of orchestral instruments - violin, fluite, cello and so on - as well as female and male choirs to do the opera-like vocals. In 1997 they released a 10-year aniversary album called A'arab Zaraq Lucid Dreaming, containing old non-released material, a few covers and a sound-track (pure classic music) Christofer did for an art-movie.

Among the female choir members you can find the great Sarah Jezebel Deva doing solo, duet, alto and soprano vocals. She has also helped out other great bands like Covenant and Cradle of Filth with her strong voice. On the Vovin album you can also hear Lorentz Aspen from Theatre of Tragedy playing hammond organ. Other guest musicians on their album have been Ralf Scheepers (Gamma Ray, Primal Fear), Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy) and Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian). If you're a real metal fan you will probably like all their albums, otherwise the latest ones, beginning with Theli, are of supremely best quality. This is a unique metal band that you must hear because music doesn't get any better than this! Perhaps they have become a little bit too soft with their latest releases, letting the choirs and orchestra do to much of the music for them but it's still great.




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