By: Tordah

Posted: Apr 14, 2006

"Storm" was actually my first acquaintance with Theatre Of Tragedy even though the band has been around for quite some time now. From what I've gathered it's clear that the band has gone through different phrases and altered their sound quite a bit throughout their career. "Storm" is their most recent album and features a bunch of poppy gothic rock songs similar to bands like Beseech and newer Tiamat. Theatre Of Tragedy offers all the standard ingredients of the genre: fragile female vocals in the choruses, deep monotonous male vocals during verses, melancholic piano melodies, simplistic guitar-playing and drums. It's all been done to death before and sadly "Storm" offers absolutely nothing new to the table.

Right from the opening title track you get the feeling that you've heard this all before. The songs all follow the basic verse-chorus-verse format and there's hardly anything in the songs that stands out as special. After listening to three songs you realize that the rest of the songs will basically sound the same. It's pretty obvious that Theatre Of Tragedy is trying to gain commercial success with this album. The songs are extremely predictable and this is exactly the kind of stuff you would hear if you turned on MTV or the radio. There's nothing metal about this album at all. It's just your standard goth-rock with slightly distorted guitars.

A few of the songs were okay, the title track for instance is pretty catchy but it gets old very fast. After hearing it three times I never wanted to hear it ever again. The sad thing is that the other songs are even worse. Below average and easily forgettable. I doubt that this album will get much recognition even among people who dig this kind of music more than I do. It's just that plain and boring. It's not even un-original in a good "honouring your influences" kind of way. It feels like there's absolutely no effort and passion behind the music. It feels very stale and emotionless, especially in the vocal department. The female vocals provided by Nell Sigland are quite nice sometimes but the male vocals by Raymond I. Rohonyi are extremely boring and uninspiring. It doesn't even sound like he's singing most of the time, he's just talking. Not to mention that they're always drenched in various effects to sound even more crappy and annoying.

I can't find much good to say about "Storm" to be honest. The music is bland and extremely unoriginal and you forget about it the moment you listen to it. Even the cover art is plain and boring to look at. The music doesn't evoke any emotions whatsoever and I can't help but to feel that Theatre Of Tragedy is just doing this to make some money. This is the most boring 2006 album I've heard by far.

Rating: 3/10

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