THRENODY — Bad Dreams Do Come True (review)

THRENODY — Bad Dreams Do Come True album cover Album · 2016 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
adg211288
Bad Dreams Do Come True (2016) is the debut full-length album by US atmospheric black metal act Threnody. The band have released the album for free via their Bandcamp page.

There are only three tracks on Bad Dreams Do Come True, so we're dealing with a couple of long compositions here. The final shorter track is a cover of the Burzum song Lost Wisdom. I'd say that Burzum is a decent point of reference for how Threnody sound on Bad Dreams Do Come True. Especially regarding the growled vocals of Ben Skonecki where it sounds like he's really going for matching the style of growling used by Varg Vikernes. That's not necessarily a good thing as although I do think Burzum's Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (1994) is a masterpiece of a black metal record, I've always found Vikernes' style grating after a while. Though I do listen to Burzum this particular song is not one I'm familiar with, but when Threnody perform it it sounds like a solid black metal piece.

The bigger draw to this band though is their original material rather than their Burzum cover. Though just two songs they clock in at 27:35 and 12:21 respectively. Taking up over half of the album's duration on its own, the first is 2001: A Space Odyssey, which as you might expect from the name is based on the classic 1968 film by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, to the point which it samples the iconic theme music from the film as well as dialogue, particularly that of HAL 9000. It takes Threnody a little while to get their black metal music started, to the point where I was starting to wonder if it ever would, but once it does get going the 2001 dialogue against the atmospheric black backdrop proves to be surprisingly effective and even quite sinister sounding.

The middle track is the title track Bad Dreams Do Come True which while still quite long is a much more direct black metal composition from Threnody since it forgoes the voice-overs of 2001: A Space Odyssey except at its very beginning. The track to my ears doesn't flow as well as it could though as there are a couple of instances where it seems to be fading out and ending only to abruptly restart in such a way that it sounds as if the next track has started, as if Threnody just glued a few shorter songs together with cheap sellotape that isn't quite managing to hold everything together.

Though it displays a couple of noted issues their interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey alone makes Bad Dreams Do Come True quite the promising debut album from Threnody. It will be interesting to hear what they can come up with next.
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