Coming from France, Lethian Dreams formed in 2002. After three demos, they released their debut album, “Bleak Silver Streams”, which got quite decent reviews, but wasn't good enough for a breakthrough. 2012 found them with far lesser members, as Matthieu Sachs is on the guitar and Carline Van Roos has taken over pretty much everything else, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and is in charge of the vocals. And like that, they did their second attempt to become known to the world with “Season Of Raven Words”.
The first thing that I noticed on this album was the vocals. Yes, when you listen to doom metal you expect it to be heavy and slow, but Van Roos' voice is so soft and mellow that made me sleepy. That was a huge difference from Lethian Dreams' debut album, where Carlos D' Agua participated with his Stainthorpe-like vocals. It was much more powerful. Apart from that bit, Van Roos does the job and paints a bleak picture for the listener. Sachs' guitar work is really good and full of distortion. In fact, there is so much distortion that if we had shrieking, instead of the soft singing, this would be a nice black metal album. In the parts where the guitar takes the lead, it creates easily feelings of hopelessness and desperation. What I really liked was the drumming. Van Roos had done a great job there. The drums, and especially the cymbals, stand out in most of the songs. Around the middle of “Dawn”, the slow tempo of the guitar an each drum kick make you feel like the weight of the world has come down on your shoulders. In “Wandering” the drums become much more explosive and in “Satyrs” they are very oddly timed, but at the ending of that song the drumming turns into a true performance. “See”, with only some beautiful piano keys and soft singing, and “Invisible” are the most mellow songs of “Season Of Raven Words”, and in “Raven” you can find an interesting bass line. A very nice moment of this album is also “White Gold”, which starts with clean guitar tones, but continues with heavy guitar and drums.
All in all, “Season Of Raven Words” was an average attempt by Lethian Dreams. I prefer “Bleak Silver Streams” much better. But this album had its good moments too. “Dawn”, “Wandering” and “White Gold” held my attention and made me feel all that I was supposed to feel. Maybe the next time Lethian Dreams will create a truly good album.
Label: Orcynia Records
Carline Van Roos – Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, drum programming
Matthieu Sachs – Guitar
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