Enemy of Reality – Where Truth May Lie
Release Date: 24th February 2022
Label: Vinyl Store
Bandcamp
Genre: Symphonic Metal
FFO: Tristania, Xandria, Therion.
Review By: Kira L. Schlechter
When you come from a land as rich in history as Greece, it’s only natural that it would inspire your songwriting, as it has for Enemy of Reality on its latest, “Where Truth May Lie.”
This is the third album for singer Iliana Tsakiraki, guitarist Steelianos Amoiridis, bassist Thanos, and drummer Philip Stone, serving as the follow-up to 2016’s “Arakhne.”
The band’s bio says the story behind the album is a priest in Ancient Greece “trying to find an answer for certain tragic events that destroyed his life.” Meanwhile, the Satyrs claim that the “only truth is hidden in music, dance, wine and erotic pleasures.”
Hey, base an album on Greek mythology – which I’ve been into since the third grade – and you’ve already got a captive audience in me. But you’ve got to do it well, too, and EOR does. Boy, do they.
The introduction, “Final Prayer,” heralds the lashing guitars and insistent blast beats at the heart of the opener, “Downfall.” Iliana’s voice can best be described as round – round and full-throated in tone; round in pronunciation. She shows off formidable operatic chops later in the chorus, a technique she uses (but never overuses) throughout. Here’s our priest telling us of the tragedy that’s befallen him – it’s not clear if it’s war or some other type of violence, but his “world has turned to ashes” and “all I loved is gone.” He cries out for divine help before the faster-paced chorus, in which he vows vengeance (“Sudden ungodly wrath consumes me/Violent force, the hate that fuels me”), but he knows that will be, indeed, his downfall. The tempo, along with Iliana’s frenzied delivery, really drives that idea home, that he is desperate, he is raging, and that nothing good will come of it.
“At the Edge of Madness” begins with a fiddle melody, which juxtaposes creepily alongside the guitars, so the title makes sense musically too – it’s jagged, nervous, you can tell things are brewing. So our priest, this “victim of godless crime,” is bereft, wandering “with no path to follow,” with only his memories and “no more faith to find.” The chorus is reflective, as he wonders “what lies beyond suffering.” And as it alludes to the previous song, it hints also at what is to come as the priest notices “creatures surrounding me,” whose “dancing shadows seem to ease my sadness” and he wonders if “answers can be found.”
So here’s where the satyrs show up.
Our hero finds a little solace in the madness of Bacchus – “The Vineyard Song” is a salute to the fruit of the vine and how it can make you forget your troubles. Set first to an enticing chug in the verses, which lure him to “find euphoria bottled in a small flask,” then to a brisk, popping groove in the joyous, untrammelled chorus, it urges, “raise your cup and sip the only truth” – in vino, veritas indeed. There’s a clever play on words in the line “Entranced and used and wasted” – take that as you will. It’s a getting-plastered song with class – Iliana’s high notes at the end are pretty spectacular, too. And now, with tongues loosened, they begin to relate their own history to the priest.
There’s no fun to be had in the harrowing “Serenade of Death,” the story of the satyr Marsyas, who dared challenge Apollo, god of the sun and of music, to a musical contest. Yeah, he lost, and paid the ultimate price. The music is suitably chilling; it’s a slower dirge, heavy, dark, and lush. There’s no sparing on the gruesome details as “the forest god who dared in pride to wallow,” whose “fine notes deranged the maids,” is punished for his hubris – “he dies skinned” at Apollo’s hand, “pinned, like a moth/He hangs, stripped off, his skin-cloth.” It’s awful, but the wording and imagery is beautiful. Iliana is terrific throughout, especially on the wordless vocals that bookend the verses and on the operatic eulogy that is the chorus. A fiddle refrain at the end gives it that folk/traditional touch.
Set to tense string-laden orchestration and an elastic groove, “Ever-Lusting” (how great is that play on words?) takes us from the abandonment found in wine to the abandonment found in sex. Iliana duets with a harsh vocalist in verses that drip with double entendre, and it’s an exceedingly effective concept – she’s alluring (“Come and join this bond, the pleasure’s shrine” and “buried in bodies entwined are sips of delight”) and he down and dirty (“drawn by erotic scent, your blood runs hot” and “warm drops of silver brushed over their skin” – ahem). The chorus revels in “the raw desire,” the ecstasy, luring the priest with “our sensual sprees (that) divide slaves from the people that roam free.”
“Tears of Echo” is a low, crunchy stomp, the verses pleasantly off-kilter in their bassy groove. The Echo of the title is the nymph cursed by Hera (because she was covering for Zeus’ naughty antics) to repeat only the last words spoken to her. The verses tell of her pursuit by lustful satyr Pan, and she wants no part of it, as she says: “My soul could not bear his appalling touch” and “God of frenzy came/My unwilling love to claim.” The verses refer to “My voice, my curse,” how she is “compelled forever to repeat your words.” Echo’s big claim to fame was to later fall in tragic love with Narcissus. After he died, she pined away for him until just her voice was left. And there are appropriate uses of echo throughout, at the end of each verse and at the very end, where Iliana and the orchestration echo each other. Very well done.
Back to the priest again with “Long-Forgotten,” which appears to show him on a sort of quest for guidance, to regain his faith – as he says, “Though I’m restless, I must awake/What has been long-forgotten.” The tight, beefy swing of the verses stretches into the looser one of the prechorus; things then tighten up in the very Nightwish-esque call-and-response chorus, with the choir punching out the first words, then Iliana following. Our hero travels far and wide, winding up in the mountains, where he comes across “the wise bearer of all secret knowledge,” who “lies fallen asleep … with his limbs bound together.” He demands, “Will you answer me/Or should I let you rot alone.”
He gets his answer in “Deliverance” – from the creature described in “Long-Forgotten,” who happens, oddly enough, to be a satyr. Thundering, with spat-out riffing and orchestration, its intimate mix on Iliana’s vocal reflects the intimacy of their conversation. The satyr asks why the priest is there – “speak out your mind and feeble heart,” he says, wondering in the second verse, “Can you endure the weight of truth?” The satyr’s response in the operatic chorus is blunt: “You are born out of luck and tormenting pain/Raised to die in complete disdain/Like all mortal men.” The priest is devastated to hear this brutally honest answer, and in a wrenching first-person take on the chorus, he pleads, “Can’t you see I’ve lost everything I own/Yet the answer remains unknown/Held only by you” (piano playing the main melody is Iliana’s only accompaniment here). As the music builds, he begs, “Now I ask to escape from my ignorance … can’t you see?”
Then, in another wonderful bit of continuity, the satyr, the “Goat-Legged Deceiver” himself, explains how the priest – this “Offspring of a primitive life/Chasing a reason to be” – should now proceed with his life. The priest’s grief is pointless, so he should just party: “drink, dance, and deceive,” “pursue all pleasure regardless of aftermath.” The satyr mocks him in the second verse – “Asking me in disbelief/Visions of hope to deliver/Recklessly wasting our time.” After another chorus, though, the priest has had enough. Iliana’s operatic chops are in full liquidity throat in the highly theatrical bridge when he wearily demands, “Enough of your glaring lies/False prophet in disguise.”
The finale, “Baptised in Fire,” is typical Greek tragedy. The priest is in full what-the-hell self-pity mode – “all my life has been in vain/Now your words have caused what’s left inside me to rot” – and offers “One final toast for what I’ve lost/To sinful vice, our sacrifice.” He’s going to end it all in a fiery blaze (literally, “righteous wrath ignites”) and he’s taking the satyr with him – “Drink with me the poison that you serve/Time for you to pay for all the men you deride,” he says, “In our end we face what we deserve.” He intimates the satyr will face divine judgment (“What lies beyond your godly fraud?”) but he himself, in “sweet release,” will be “free at last.”
“WhereTruth May Lie” is exceedingly well-crafted and well-thought-out, with a clearly delineated plot line and superb storytelling. It has an admirable sense of restraint both lyrically – they give you just enough of the tale in each track – and musically – while they are symphonic metal, they don’t overdo the orchestration (everything has plenty of fire and bite) nor drag songs out ad nauseam. The long-grown-up third-grader in me was immensely pleased, and you will be too. 
(5 / 5)
