Therion - Theli

Theli has been hailed by almost all as the apex of Therion's career, and I must agree. It is here that the vision they displayed on their prior two releases is truly realized. I guess that Nuclear Blast took a huge gamble and invested over $40,000 dollars for hiring the North German Radio choir! The result is an album of epic sound and proportions. A lot of this is due to the upped production, Harris Johns is a fine thrash metal producer, but much as he deadened the overall sound of two Voivod albums (Killing Technology and Dimension Hatr?ss), I think he held Therion back. As with Lepaca Kliffoth, Chrisofer Johnsson does an excellent job with the orchestration, also opting to leave the majority of the non-choir vocals to Drummer Piotr Wawrzeniuk and Dan Swan?. There are only two spots on the album where I feel that things went too far, but they only last about one minute over the span of a 50+ minute album! I think that you will either find this godly or unltimately cheesy, and I choose the former. Another step in expanding the world of metal and easily one of the best albums of 1996.