It's not hard to see all the musical changes that took place with every release in the history of Therion. Most fans probably consider the Theli and Vovin albums to be the best creations of the Swedish composer, Chris Johnsson. Deggial and Secret of the Runes were both excellent albums but something was missing to achieve masterpiece status.
Lemuria and Sirius B have that missing element. The grand vision of Chris takes form in this double album and Therion return to teach the world what symphony and metal are really about!
First of all, I'd like to say that this is a review of the promo CD which includes excerpts from the two albums, meaning that a few songs are missing, so it was inevitable that the whole picture was missing. Also, it's good to clear things up about the nature of the double album. These are two different albums with the same date release and later on there will be a special edition including both of them. Having cleared these things up, let's move to the review.
I was a bit sceptical at first (though impressed by the amazing artwork gracing the covers) but the next minutes from the moment I hit play on my CD player, found me headbanging, air guitaring and screaming hard to understand grunts. All this while I was driving too *ahem*.
I couldn't help but thinking that Typhon, Uthark Runa, An Arrow from the Sun, Son of the Sun and Kali Yuga to name but a few (I tried hard to keep this a short list) will be responsible for major neck injuries during their next live gig here and total breakdown of my trusty old CD player at home since we are talking about heavy stuff here. Don't think that it will be just a neck breaking trip though.
Slow songs like Lemuria and Sirius B will have you mentally travelling beyond the stars.
Chris is a master at making the orchestra and choir (the biggest ones he worked with so far) merge with the heavy guitars, all working together to create the trademark Therion sound. There is also much experimentation with musical instruments ranging beyond the typical symphony and metal ones. Mandolins, Balalaikas, Leslie Guitars,  Harpsichord are a few of them.
I don't need to comment much on the additional feeling provided by the choir. Enchanting female vocals (no Martina,my favourite siren amongst them, in case you are wondering though) and an awe inspiring Gregorian-style male choir. Besides the huge choir there are various solo vocalists including Chris himself obviously. Mats Levén appears in many songs and Piotr Wawrzeniuk also sings in a number of them.
Have no doubt, both albums are amazing. There's a slight variation of sound between them yet they are sides of the same coin. The production is awesome and worthy of such excellent work. And the fun part is that I am referring to a portion of these albums all this time.
Every band trying to make symphony and metal work (and I am mostly referring to the ignorant ones), should listen to this album and learn a thing or two (or a couple of thousand ones in this case).