Thy Only Forgotten - Mythos Daemonium

December 10, 2009

Reviewer: Matt

Hot on the heels of The Chasm’s landmark Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm comes long-lost project Thy Only Forgotten’s debut album.  Releasing a sole demo in the late 1990s before dropping off the map, Thy Only Forgotten finally grace us with a proper full length, Mythos Daemonium.  Thy Only Forgotten is helmed by Roberto Valle, who played with The Chasm and Cenotaph and is backed up by Antonio Leon (drummer of The Chasm) and Carlos Lopez.  The Chasm frontman Daniel Corchado contributed guitars, vocals, keyboards, and his considerable production skills to Mythos Daemonium as well.

With all the connections Thy Only Forgotten has to The Chasm, a listener may expect some similarity between the two.  They do share a similar lyrical orientation - epic poetry contemplating death and the cosmos - but the similarities largely end there.  Rather, Thy Only Forgotten play a sort of melodic blackened death metal, similar perhaps to Swedish bands Dawn and Dissection, but with the immediately identifiable melodic voicing of classic Mexican death metal.

Mythos Daemonium is a fantastic album that is over all too quickly at less than forty minutes in length.  Sublime leads, stunning atmosphere, and surprisingly emotive vocals form the core of the album.  There’s plenty of variation for those with short attention spans: the opening title track is a mid-paced doom track with a haunting melody and brilliant keyboard accents, while follow-up “Of Eternal Tolls” would have been perfectly at-home on Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy) with its blistering pace and a jaw-dropping melodic bridge.  Thy Only Forgotten have proven themselves to be a band ready to take black/death hybrid metal beyond its Dissection-clone doldrums, as Mythos Daemonium is a fully effective fusion of the transcendental melodicism of black metal and the apocalyptic fury of death metal. 

I’ve read unconfirmed reports that two of the six tracks on Mytos Daemonium date back to the band’s formative years, and if that’s true, it’s amazing how fresh and invigorating this Thy Only Forgotten’s core style sounds a decade and a half later.  At any rate, Thy Only Forgotten has been reformed only since 2008, and I can imagine that they have years of creativity ahead of them.  Mythos Daemonium is an excellent debut and a must-have for fans of any fan of contemplative melodic extreme metal.

Release Date: December, 2009
Label: Lux Inframundis Prod.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mythos Daemonium
2. Of Eternal Tolls
3. Dusk of Necro
4. The Rise and Fall of Milleniums
5. The Fiend in the Abyss
6. Dark Angel of the Four Winds

Total playing time: 38:48

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