Therion - Beloved Antichrist

I’ll be honest, this is probably the least thorough I’ve been in understanding an album fully and getting numerous listens in before writing about it, but I wouldn’t just do that out of laziness, and I would attest that it’s partly Therion’s fault on this one. At three hours long, it is one of the longest single albums I can think of off the top of my head, which of course sets a high bar for what that album has to do. If you’re going to to put out a three-hour-long album, it better justify that length and a listener’s massive investment in it. This album doesn’t.

I had mused earlier if I wasn’t getting into it because it’s just not my cup of tea, but on paper a giant symphonic metal opera with classical, operatic vocals sounds great to me, and three hours worth just makes me hope it’s proggy and interesting the whole time. Unfortunately what happens here is the album gets absorbed in its own idea that it’s big and epic, foolishly reliant on the often flimsy rock opera format to translate it, and it is a huge letdown.

Listening to this album was so quickly boring and trying to make it through the whole thing, even with intermissions, was a chore. I think I only made through the whole way twice. From beginning to end it cycles through a few basic structures of symphonically backed metal and loud operatic vocals to back it up. The problem with the album is that it’s nothing more than what’s on paper: long, overproduced, gargantuan, and baroque in a rigid sense. What’s missing is any memorable musical moments to take away from the album or even the sense of a grand musical journey. The strict adherence to the classical styling seems more to drain the life out of the album than contribute to its expressiveness. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to have any fun during this album, like it wanted me to just sit there with my hands folded like I was at a symphony and watch its performance and clap at the end, and hide my desperation to find the restroom after not being allowed to get up for three hours.

It really just seems like Therion just wanted to make something big and have everything fall into place, like they had some massive, convoluted lyrical concept in their heads but not nearly enough musical ideas to back it up, so they just chose to wrap it in unimaginative, stiff neo-classical metal. I came away from this just bored and frustrated at the incredible amount of time I subjected myself to its boredom.