Review by Sonny for Thergothon - Stream From the Heavens (1994)

Recorded in 1992 by Finland's Thergothon but not released until '94, a year after they split up, Stream From the Heavens represents the primordial ooze from which the funeral doom genre pulled it's hulking bulk. Taking Winter's pioneering death doom and slowing it even further, to a barely perceptible heartbeat, this was the origin of doom metal's most melancholy of all sub-genres. The production is quite poor, but doesn't affect the album overly. The music is minimalist and glacially slow with subdued, sustained guitar chords and plodding drum beats, but there are some interesting tonal variations, such as the thin-sounding organ that occasionally brings to mind the theremin sound often heard in 1950's science fiction movies and the trade off between the growling, sulphurous main vocal and the reedy and washed-out clean vocal (that weirdly sounds like The Velvet Underground's Nico if she was male!)

I think it's fair to say that although funeral doom has advanced (certainly technically) in the 25 years since it's release, this is a truly original album in the development of extreme metal and there has never really been a release quite like it neither before nor since.