The first Tristania album is an incredible surprise to the whole metal scene.
The Norweigan band has it all; dark and deep singing, powerful bass guitars and
guitars, a massive choir consisting of band members and other professionals.
Napalm Records have also done a great job, as always, and the production is more
than good, it is simply outstanding.

The line-up:
Morten Veland: Vocals, guitars
Vibeke Stene: Vocals
Rune Østerhus: Bass guitar
Kenneth Olsson: Drums
Anders H Hidle: Guitar
Einar Moen: Keyboards, programming


The album starts with a preludium, consisting of clean singing, bells, organ and a
very peaceful atmosphere, leading on to Evenfall, one of the strongest metal songs ever,
and it has everything that should be expected from a metal song. It has full and
rich background vocals, and the background sounds from all the musicians are
absolutely stunning. The way the guitars and bass guitar are used throughout the
album is extremely intelligent. The use of massive rhythm guitars with the support
from the other instruments gives a very deep and dark sound with further support from
the drums.

In the third song, Pale Enchantress, the genious of Tristania is shown in the chorus,
and especially the song writing. Here, the chorus is changed from the demo version, and
a backing vocal is added to the singing, so that a perfect combination of distorted
male vocals is combined with clean female vocals. The blend is excellent and this part
of the record may very well be the best one.

December Elegy, the fourth song, has a very quiet and peaceful base, with some heavier
parts with distorted vocals and darker sound. This is probably the song I like the least
on the album, but the last minutes of the song is brilliant, with a long outro with
violins and deeper background instruments played. It is not as good as some other
parts of the album, but it is far from bad!

The fifth track, Midwintertears, goes to a straight attack through the loudspeakers,
starting out with Veland's powerful singing. It seems to be deeper, louder and darker
than ever, and is followed by a more quiet interludium, but is immediately followed up
by a short chorus, before being tuned down to a more relaxed instrumental part. This song
is rather long, and before the 8 and a half minutes are over, we are met by many shifts
in the song; distorted vocals, clean female vocals, and longer piano and guitar breaks.
This is also a truly great song.

Angellore is the next song, and it is a bit different from the other ones, as Østen Bergøy
makes a contribution with clean male vocals, and he is completely excellent in this song,
bringing it to new levels, and it works perfectly with the singing of Morten Veland. The
guitar parts and the keyboard melody are also very good parts of the songs, but Bergøy's
clean, but still very deep, singing is the biggest value of the song. This is another
song you just get amazed by, sitting astonished by its perfection and atmosphere.


Total rating: 9.5 out of 10.