“Sumerian Cry” is the debut studio album from the Swedish metal band TIAMAT, now reissued by Poland’s Putrid Cult in conspiracy with the UK’s Back on Black Records. The album was recorded at Sunlight Studio, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1989, when the band was known under the original name TREBLINKA. The track “Sumerian Cry, Pt. 1” is a re-interpretation of the intro melody from “Crawling in Vomit”, the first track off TREBLINKA’s first demo. The track “The Sign of the Pentagram” is exclusive to the CD version of the album and was not recorded at the same time as the rest of the album. This particular track was intended to be included on a compilation-CD released by Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen (editor of Norwegian metal fanzine Slayer Mag). The CD was never released, and the track was included as a bonus track on this album. There are a few albums out there that marked the harsh beginning of several bands that seem to be quite underrated, simply overlooked, or perhaps underappreciated nowadays. Think of THERION’s “Of Darkness…”, SENTENCED’s “Shadows of the Past” and of course, TIAMAT’s “Sumerian Cry”. While the guitar tone does resemble Swedish death metal and the band sounds at their most aggressive here, there are times when this feels closer to that of an 80’s or early 90’s Brazilian extreme metal record than anything else. Of course, plenty of these songs were written under the TREBLINKA name, which one should keep in mind were more of a black/thrash metal.
Released by:
Putrid Cult Records (Poland), 2023.
