UMUR "Sumerian Cry" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Tiamat. The album was released in June 1990 by CMFT Productions. "Sumerian Cry" is alledgedly the first full-length studio album recorded in the legendary Sunlight Studios in Stockholm Sweden. The album was produced by the equally legendary producer Tomas Skogsberg.

The music style on the album is old school Swedish death metal. It´s heavy and brutal with growling vocals. The songs are generally very simple and there are not much variation to be found neither within songs nor between songs. The musicianship is not especially impressive and it´s obvious that the band were not that skilled musicians at this point. The production is not that powerful either. The classic Sunlight sound is there, but later releases recorded in that studio had a much better sound.

"Sumerian Cry" is a classic old school Swedish death metal album. The album has however aged pretty badly, and I can´t say I find it very interesting today. Compared to some of the other classic releases from contemporary artists such as "Left Hand Path (1990)" by Entombed or "Like an Ever Flowing Stream (1991)" by Dismember, "Sumerian Cry" sounds oddly primitive and amaturish. A 2 star (40%) rating is warranted.

Charcaroth Tiamat's debut, Sumerian Cry, is a solid album of primitive and arcane Swedish death metal with a subtle early black metal feel at times, and a subtle sense of experimentation.

The production is fairly standard of the metal coming from Sweden at the time, thick and crushing, but not oppressive, with that patented, grinding guitar sound popularized by bands like Entombed. Here though, there's a little more emphasis on atmosphere, giving Sumerian Cry a foggy, 'arcane' quality that works well with what the band is doing.

Although the main focus is squarely on primitive death metal brutality, there are a few interesting, subtle touches that lend Sumerian Cry a lot of character, and hint at the direction Tiamat would go in successive releases. Passages of whispered vocals, acoustic guitar melodies, then there's the odd bit in Evilized where the band breaks into some bluesy 'death n' roll' with a tinkling, tonky tonk piano-sounding melody and some vocal sampling for a moment. Even from the beginning, Tiamat seems to be a band that isn't afraid of experimenting a little, and allowing some quirkiness into the music. During the slower moments of the album, one can hear the beginnings of the doomy direction the band would soon take.