(DGR has finally completed a review of the latest EP, released last June, by Tides of Kharon from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.)
Believe it or not we actually do have a history with Canadian group Tides Of Kharon. Up to this point we’ve covered every EP the band have released – no full-length albums as of yet – most recently the 2021 release of Titanomachy alongside British group Ghosts of Atlantis in a two-fer review collective. June saw the Greek-mythology inspired melodeath group unleash a new one in the form of Ancient Sleeper, closing out a two-year gap of silence from the band in exchange for another five songs and near half-hour of music.
Tides Of Kharon‘s chosen release method feels a bit like checking in with the band as they forge and hammer new material, working on their sound and experimenting with the wide vareity of approaches that the genre has available to them. Both expert and continual student, Tides Of Kharon absorb into their sound as much as they issue forth, all in service of the particular tales they have chosen to craft a song around this time. Ancient Sleeper then, could be considered the newest check-in with the band.
Tides Of Kharon have managed to pack four more minutes of music into Ancient Sleeper‘s prescribed five songs than its older-sibling Titanomachy had, while also cutting down the gap of time between them from four years to two. Just going by album art and stats numbers, Ancient Sleeper hints at having a much broader scope than its immediate predecessor, while also looking to be much more darker and ‘death-obsessed’ as well.
Tides Of Kharon share a lot with the current class of melo-death artists out there, aspiring to create epic works within the bounds of strong guitar melodies and solid gallops. The light melancholy and doom-inflected strain that has worked its way through the melodeath scene for the better part of two decades now is present as well, taking a long established style meant to craft catchy songs – though metal’s serious business crowd would be loathe to admit it – that pull just as much from thrash and punk as they do the death metal scene and placing it somewhere recognizably cold with frozen lakes and its various imagined sceneries.
Were you not aware that Tides Of Kharon were based out of Canada you’d be forgiven for assuming that they have been hovering around the greater part of Scandinavia for some time. If you had to pick an immediate peer for the band you’d likely find it in Greece’s Aetherian, who have been playing in a similar genre sandbox for some time now, most recently flexing those muscles on their At Storm’s Edge release. Ancient Sleeper is obviously its own creature of hefty growl and snarl, yet you can easily hear the shared DNA in a song like “Forgemaster” with some of the more grandeur-driven melodeath groups out there.
If you have your prospector hat on and you’re digging around for some of the faster tracks in the mix, the opening one-two combo of “A Rotting Immortal” and “Dreamer Of A Dead World” keep the tempo high for the most part. Tides Of Kharon do like themselves a chugging riff to propel things forward, often giving themselves over to a galloping pace for their verses and then quickly picking things back up soon after.
“A Rotting Immortal” shows off some good pyrotechnics on the guitar-lead front, with a melody that picks up to close out each chorus that tends to stick around in the head long after that quick motif has passed. “Dreamer Of A Dead World” continues in much the same vein – including a similar rhythm riff at times – that can make the first two songs feel like different approaches that’ve led to the same overall solution.
Ancient Sleeper seems to unintentionally shift around “Forgemaster”, because afterward you get the heftier songs in “Twelve Labors” and “When Chaos Ruled The Sky” to close things out. Those are a little slower than the opening two at times; they’re built around bigger sounding riff-work and deeper vocal bellows – though “When Chaos Ruled The Sky” has a fun intro section to help break things up. The halfway point of Ancient Sleeper turns the EP more dath metal than you’d expct.
Thus, the new EP sticks pretty close to what Tides Of Kharon are known for. In the time we’ve been covering them, they’ve kept themselves to a pretty rigid ‘five songs every three years’ style of release schedule and it seems to be working for them. Each EP draws from various mythological aspects for lyrical inspiration and musically serves as a snapshot of both the scene as a whole and also where Tides Of Kharon may be drawing inspiration from at that time.
While they seem to be shifting between various sounds and haven’t fully settled on something to push into an overall full-length, they do have a strong core-blueprint of heavy galloping guitar riff and bellowed vocals that works better than you might think. Compared to Titanomachy prior to it, Ancient Sleeper is a little darker but overall still a very recognizably Tides Of Kharon release for those who’ve been following. Melodeath fans will find an enjoyable meal in this one.
https://tidesofkharon.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-sleeper
https://www.facebook.com/TidesofKharon/