Jan 7
The Thing About Thy Despair’s ‘The Song of Desolation’
Would you like your metal with beauty and beast?
The Thing About is a series of short, simple heavy metal reviews. Scroll down to the headings that interest you most or read the whole thing. The previous installment was about Myrkur’s album Mausoleum.
The words “operatic metal” inspire loathing in some and ecstasy in others. Most discover it through big names like Nightwish, Epica and Within Temptation, and some stay for Xandria and Ancient Bards before deciding this is a phase and moving on. Others, however, believe that even lesser-known acts are channeling from a higher sphere of music. For those, the hooked few, there is Thy Despair.
The Band
Thy Despair is a symphonic metal band from Kyiv, Ukraine, a city Russian president Vladimir Putin has been hitting with missiles. Whatever the band’s exact politics, Metal Force reports that frontman and guitarist Nephilim has expressed sadness over the fighting and emphasized the need to resist oppression — this back in 2020 during an earlier phase of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Freedom is the group’s message, and Nephilim isn’t the only band member to voice it.
The Music
Thy Despair also has a frontwoman. On The Song of Desolation (2020), Elin brings the beauty through operatic vocals and Nephilim brings the beast through growls, and once Belle, Prince Adam and the orchestra (keyboard or otherwise) are in the house, you know exactly what sound to expect. This is bowing down and making offerings to Nightwish. Like other bands to adopt that pioneering band’s style, Thy Despair is undeniably heavy, with chunky guitars and driving percussion, and like those other bands, the music is forgettable. Lovers of a pretty voice to metal, however, won’t care.
The Thing About
And that’s the thing about Thy Despair: It’s a pleasant surprise in a genre whose best practitioners are often hokey and dull. Simone Simons’s voice is pure bliss even as the rest of Epica bores. An unknown band with one album may not inspire confidence before hitting Play, yet once you do, Thy Despair’s instrumentalists thrum like a well-oiled machine, the production makes room for everybody, and Elin’s voice doesn’t sound the least strained. A few moments of spoken word are the final touches on a satisfying, if predictable, album.
The Art
Thus, judging this album by its cover paid off. The art is a photo of a woman in skull makeup and a gorgeous gown, tulle in the sleeves and skirt, with a floral design on the bodice. It’s fit for the stage at Lviv Opera — a performance of Mykola Lysenko’s The Drowned Maiden (1885), perhaps? Sumptuous and gothic, this image was enough to get me to make a blind purchase and take the disc home for a spin. And another. And another.
The Last Word
Thy Despair’s The Song of Desolation is beauty-and-the-beast symphonic metal straight outta Nivellen’s manor. If you despise that kind of metal, then you’ll wish it nothing but death by impalement. Fans of the genre, however, shouldn’t miss Thy Despair and The Song of Desolation.
Rating: 3/5
Note: I wrote this in English for Medium.com. If you are reading this in another language or on another platform, it has been pirated, possibly by a bot. I quit the Medium Partner Program, so I’m not doing this for money. It is nice, however, to know someone’s reading. By all means, clap or comment to let me know somebody’s out there, and feel free to share links to this on social media.
