Review Summary: Repetitive gothic metal album with good vocals and atmosphere.
This band has the downside of being very cliche, cheesy, predictable, and often, exaggerated. Ignoring the lyrics and song names, these issues still come up through the music itself. But do these hindrances take the album down in flames with it? Or do the positive elements outshine the negatives? Does it fulfill expectations? Is it possible to listen to it without skipping any songs, and still be loved? To answer these questions, it is necessary to identify the strengths and weaknesses, and the overall flow.
Theatres des Vampires is a band that has changed their style many times. They started as a Black Metal band with their first album, and moved to symphonic black metal/melodic BM, then slowly to Gothic Metal, and finally to an industrial-influenced sound. This record features Lord Vampyr and Sonya Scarlet as the vocalists, which gives a beauty and the beast type of vocals. The cover is a purple "goth" girl, which is interesting but cheesy. For reference, this album was made during the gothic metal era of the band.
What are the strengths of the album? Defiantly the vocals, hands down. Sonya Scarlet's and Lord Vampyr's vocals are very fitting to the atmosphere, and are one of the main contributors to the sound and flow of the songs. They are what you would expect of a typical Gothic metal album, but the highlights are the duets, such as the one in "Angel of Lust". Lord Vampyr uses growled vocals and sung, opera-like vocals, and spoken vocals. In some songs, they sing both together which also works well. Another strength are the keyboards, which are the second most important aspect of the music. They remind of a horror films, the night, Halloween, and Tim Bourton movies, and are used in almost every song, sometimes complementing the guitars, or playing their own terrifying melody. The keyboards are the main tool for creating the nightly atmosphere, and do their job well.
Unfortunately, the album is far from perfect, and suffers from a number of flaws. The guitars aren't too impressive, they play the same notes over and over, and are often distracting from the music. There is little variety, and suffer from being too loud, diverting attention from the other elements in the music. This is a metal album, of course, and they are necessary for that piece of heaviness, but fails here. It is not fun to listen to the same notes over and over for the duration of the WHOLE ALBUM. Repetition is another recurring element; both in the songs and the album. It is often a chore for me to listen to full album since very few songs stand out, and the rest feels like the same thing recycled over and over. I wouldn't say there are any un-listenable songs here, but some suffer from being too similar, predictable, and boring. This usually occurs when the lengths are so short as the ones here, the average is about 4 minutes per song. Although it is gothic metal, and variety is not necessary, more elements could be added to the songs to make them more interesting.
The album is hard to listen too entirely, but it has some memorable songs. Sonya and Lord Vampyr are amazing here, but everything else could be improved. Even the keyboards, which are done well, could still be used more, there are many parts of songs that feel empty or incomplete and more tracks could remedy that. The rest of the flaws are very bad, especially the repetition. This is one of the weakest albums of the band's discography, but much better than the albums that come after it, without Lord Vampyr. The sound here is just too simple at times, and songs don't have much progression either. I'd take any TDV album released before this any day.
