Search - Theatre of Tragedy :: Musique

2.5 stars - Ill conceived and terribly inconsistent

M. B. Link | USA | 01/23/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Musique(2000). Theatre Of Tragedy's fourth studio album.



Evereywhere I look, I'm constantly trying to find new and interesting female-fronted gothic rock/industrial bands. I was introduced by The Gathering first, followed by Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Lullacry, After Forever, and others. All of them had something special about their vocalists, songwriting, and the band backing them. For a while, I kept hearing about this other band, Theatre Of Tragedy, and that they've been praised from various places, so when I saw one of their albums at CD Tradepost, I purchased it off of a whim, not having heard a single track.



Then to my horror, I looked at the reviews for Musique before popping it in, and found the general consensus was that it was their worst album and that they sold out to Euro pop music. I became worried and thought that people were being a little harsh on them. So I started playing it with an open mind, though cautious as to what reviews have stated.



Unfortunately, this time they were right.



The first word that popped into my mind was "tacky". And coming from a guy who can listen to a lot of 80s pop rock with no problems, that's saying a lot. Usually when you turn off an album partway through the first listen because you've had enough of it, that's never a good sign. Successive listens haven't helped much either. There are many problems that must be addressed, but the main reason responsible for this album's failure and the single place I can point to first and foremost is vocalist Raymond I. Rohonniy. I positively can't stand his thick, campy, and fake english accent that manages to permeate and destroy the music. By the second song, I wanted to punch the guy in the face and yell "Cut it out!" Imagine the vocalist that fronts the famous 70s punk band The Clash, only with an awful toneless sound. He often attempts "spoken word" sections to most of the songs in order to convey this "technology meets music" theme they have going on, but they just don't work well at all because he tries to be serious and ends up sounding cringe-inducing. In the future, ToT should cut out or at least limit the amount of places this guy can take up in the music.



Secondly, the instrumentation reeks of crappy techno sound effects. Don't get me wrong, I actually like techno when it has a decent melody and lately I've been getting into more electronic music, but there are WAAAAY too many random sound effects all over the place to be able to take any of it seriously. Synthesizers and keyboards don't really bother me because I'm a huge fan of them when they're utilized properly, but here they manage to take the cheesiest sounds and throw them all in a blender, resulting in a real mess. I'm not a fan of Euro pop, but I'm pretty sure there are much better examples around than this.



Now the reason why I gave this album 2 1/2 stars instead of one is because there are scattered areas between all the songs that are actually decent and show some potential. Vocalist Liv Kristine Espene is the main source of this. Her voice is very beautiful and shines when she comes on. The guitars usually come out during her parts as well and so the combination works. Unfortunately you have to sit through the other vocalist's torturous sections to get to them. The two sections don't mix very well together resulting in very uneven and inconsistent music throughout the disc. It's as if they couldn't decide which style they prefer, so they just left everything on there.



The album starts off okay with 'Machine' and later tracks like 'Image' and 'Crash/Concrete' aren't too bad either, but they are balanced off with corball songs like 'Musique', 'City Of Light', and 'Radio'. The strange thing is, the best song on the disc was the unlisted track 12, which serves as a decent rocker. I don't need to comment on the others because I've addressed the issues on them already.



Replayability: Seldom. Listened to it a few times, then shelved it.



So this ended up being a poor introduction to the band for me and I hope they can change for the better in the future. On Musique, they appear to be a band in trouble. Most have said that their earlier albums are much better in comparison, so I may check those out in the future. RECOMMENDATION TO AVOID UNLESS YOU LIKE EUROPOP, THEN GIVE IT A SHOT.



Recommendations instead:

-ToT's earlier albums (haven't heard them yet, but they've got to be better than this)

-'Manylion' or 'Nighttime Birds' by the Gathering

-'Comelies' or 'Unleashed Memories' by Lacuna Coil

-'Crucify My Heart' by Lullacry"

Musique

reaven | MN | 06/16/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I was excited for this album to come out. . . I hate it. This could possibly be the most disappointing CD I've ever heard. Why does Raymond want to sound like a robot version of the guy from the B-52s? If you want my honest opinion, Theatre of Tragedy need to get off their high horses. Their sell-out may have even surpassed Metallica's. Has anyone been to their website lately? Talk about a bunch of ego-driven jerks! I'm into metal that has a groove, but I'd still like it to be intelligent. I also like it when people play instruments. Why aren't the guitar players in this band bored?? There's more programming in this CD than there is in Windows 2000! I don't know what possessed them to make an album like this, but they need an exorcist badly. It's sad when a hard core Theatre of Tragedy fan like me just doesn't care anymore. I don't know what they're up to these days (probably playing dance clubs) and sadly I don't care. I am one of too many incredibly disappointed ex-fans."

NOT goth metal, still good

M. Nai | BALTIMORE, MD United States | 04/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"now this is the album that threw a lot of people off ,including myself at the beginning.I myself used to love TOT`s old style way back when so when Musique came out i was higly disappointed ad actually kind of hated it. After having put it down for a while and then going back to it I listened to it with fresh ears.yes it's not the Theatre of tragedy of old.Hey, it's not even metal.so if you're expecting to get some melodic gothic metal or whatever don`t expect it here.that having said i found this to be highly enjoyaple piece of...electro gothic rock?The songs are shorter than they used to be but more densely layered and faster and found them to be quite good. Anyway if you enjoy electro/industrial gothic rock but if you're expexting melodic githic rock you may want to look elsewhere"