I’ll go ahead and say it now. On Thorns I Lay managed to crank out three solid enough albums in the mid-late ‘90s while on Holy Records, but therein lies the problem. Solid “enough” just doesn’t cut it these days and, if I’m being honest, it didn’t then either. The dearth of quality metal from that period – much less in the doom/death genre that so held my heart during the lion’s share of that decade – may contribute to those first albums still holding up, but the ‘00s arrived, and with them the implosion of whatever was good about On Thorns I Lay.
While 2015’s Eternal Silence attempted to revive the sextet from comatose, it’s Aegean Sorrow that purports to be a true “return to form”, even by the band itself, but if the laughable pretentiousness of the spoken word intro is any indication, OTIL is not off to a good start. The title track could be an entirely different – entirely better – song, were the production not so muddy as to render the instruments a jumbled mess. While the lead chord patterns are interesting, there’s simply no bite when the leads step furtively into the room. In music like this, leadwork should swagger in confidently, but Christos and Akis seem content to peek sheepishly over the shoulders of riffs of their own making, and the song fails accordingly. “In Emerald Eyes” approaches greatness, but 4 songs and halfway into Aegean Sorrow, it’s probably too little too late. The two-part “Olethros” follows, and is classic doom/death as interpreted by OTIL, and we’re subjected to another spoken word section, and it’s just. Fucking. Abysmal at this point.
I could carry on, but you get the idea. It has finally happened. You’ve probably heard the phrase “can’t polish a turd” before, but Olympus has fallen, and we’ve got an album even Dan Swano’s pristine mixing/mastering couldn’t save.
