Search - Tristania :: Midwintertears / Angina

Good Tristania CD to Start With

ygro_wok | USA | 08/09/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Midwintertears/Angina is actually two short Tristania CD's put together. The first 4 are from their first cd and have a lower quality recording but still good while the last 3 are newer and higher quality. One great thing about Tristania is their use of female vocals. Every song has female vocals and they're not the [bad] vocals like Cradle of Filth does they actually have melody and fit very well into Tristania's songs. Especially Cease to Exist which is all female vocals. The guitar doesn't have to much of a roll in this CD which is one fault I can find but the synthesizers definitely make up for it. Overall it is a CD worth buying and for the [inexpensive] price if you don't enjoy it you won't be out much money."

4 stars for quality and lack of novelty...

mysanthropyk_overlord | USA | 01/10/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is really only for true Tristania fans, and isn't the one to start with. It combines their self-titled debut (first four tracks) and the Angina EP/single (last three) on one CD. Four of the songs were released, albeit in slightly different versions, on other albums, these being "Midwintertears" and "Pale Enchantress" from Widow's Weeds and "Angina" and "Opus Relinque" from Beyond The Veil. "Sirene" is a decent instrumental, but not really worthy of any kind of great praise. "Saturnine" is a nice closer and probably should've been on BTV instead of "Dementia." The only full-length song with vocals that wasn't released on a later album is "Cease to Exist," which, coming in at 9:17, is Tristania's longest piece. It's a more mellow song, and features only Vibeke Stene on vocals. You'd think it would be a great showcase of her exceptional talent, but she whispers most of it. It's still a very good song and in my opinion, was worth the price alone for. The other four songs, as I mentioned, are not unique to this album, but there are differences between them and the versions released on the full-length albums. The 'radio edit' of "Opus Relinque" is a full minute shorter than the one on BTV and sounds different. "Angina" lacks the synthesizer intro, which is how I would've liked to have heard it on BTV since it was right after the piano segue. The two songs from Widow's Weeds are of lower production quality, and the vocals aren't woven into the music flawlessly as they were on the LP. There are no violins on "Pale Enchantress;" the violin parts are done on the synthesizer. In short, if you're already a big fan of Tristania, get this for the sake of completeness, unless you want to spend a lot of money and get the debut album and the EP (good luck finding that one). The cover art isn't really creative (it's the band pic that's under the CD tray in Beyond The Veil), but does that really matter?"