Il ritorno dei Theatre Of Tragedy si celebra con questo "Storm" (2006) che ci ripresenta la band dopo ben quattro anni di silenzio ed uno storico cambio di line-up che vede l'abbandono della celebre Liv-Kristine Espenaes in favora della new entry Nell.
Atteso al varco da ex-fans delusi dal precedente "Assembly" il six-piece di Stavanger propone un platter che rappresenta l'ideale continuazione del percorso artistico iniziato con "Musique" nel 2000 seppur parzialmente abbandonando le forte dosi di elettronica ben presenti nel recente passato, oggetto di feroci e, talvolta, incomprensibili critiche da parte del pubblico di parte metal.
Atmosfere sognanti e visioni di eterea dolcezza ci accompagnano nelle dodici composizioni qui proposte, dove la parte del leone la fanno la splendida ugola di Nell ed i morbidi accordi di tastiera di Lorentz Aspen in un perenne incontro scontro tra vibes carichi di modernismo e trame pop-metal di facile presa. Raymond non cambia di una virgola l'impostazione vocale, che si rivela peró piú calda e sinuosa lasciandosi indietro gli aggiustamenti cibernetici ai quali ci eravamo abituati nelle due precedenti fatiche. L'aspetto ritmico si assesta su mid-tempos corposi, distorti alla maniera dell'industrial-metal ma anche capaci di risultare delicati ed avvolgenti nei passaggi piú soft mentre il crunch delle chitarre lascia intravvedere "muscoli" reminiscenti l'attitudine marcatamente hard dei norvegesi. A livello di influenze si respirano atmosfere vicine al dark-pop nel cantato a due voci ove i loops di matrice dance spariscono interamente, dando l'opportunitá al gruppo di poter esplorare nuovi sentieri carichi di emotivitá ed abbandonando una delle caratteristiche che li ha fatti risultare odiosi agli occhi dell'ottusitá di molti ex-ammiratori.
Venendo ai pezzi mi soffermerei sulla bravura a livello compositivo nel saper costruire canzoni efficaci, prive di orpelli o arzigogolature di sorta, pronte ad esplodere in ritornelli che difficilmente risultano banali, arricchiti da un'enfasi canora di gran talento. Adorabile "Storm", splendidamente aperta da semplici accordi d'avorio ed assai efficace nel chorus addolciti da female vocals cristalline mentre "Begin And End" risulta meno malinconica proponendoci ambientazioni pop-rock velate da un'attitudine movimentata nei riffs granitici di Claussen. Si segnala la ballata "Fade" nella quale il lavoro vocale di Nell é prominente, trascinandoci in un dolce uragano di sogni estivi e solari ma anche affrescata da tonalitá nostalgiche molto profonde. Diverso l'approccio in "Exile" e "Disintegration" nelle quali si ripresentano alcune delle architetture sonore giá utilizzate in "Assembly", tra breaks elettronici, chitarroni dilatati e ritmiche ora cariche di fredda soliditá ora vellutate e sottili. Ottimo lo scambio di emozioni dietro al microfono, caratteristica peculiare dei nostri che oggigiorno si esprime in maniera differente ma sempre si rivela unica ed azzeccata.
La chiusura affidata al gioiellino di "Debris" si intona perfettemante con il nuovo corso, inondandoci di vellutate emozioni intensamente accoppiate ad un riffing scontroso di chiara dervazione doom-metal che, seppur non preponderante come ai tempi dell'omonimo debut-album, rimane ben presente nella struttura dei singoli pezzi, mai sparendo nemmeno negli episodi piú fragili e melodiosi qui proposti.
Insomma un lavoro maturo, coerente e senz'altro dotato di quell'essenzialitá che mancava nelle sperimentazioni degli ultimi sei anni, in grado di mantenere intatto il valore artistico dei norvegesi dando loro l'opportunitá di continuare una ricerca sonora che sembra non avere limiti o paure di sorta. Lo scetticismo che li accompagna non verrá sfatato da questo "Storm" ma anche coloro i quali li hanno tanto derisi potrebbero trovarvi spunti interessanti. Graditissimo comeback.
Elenco tracce e testi
01 Storm (03:46)
Can you see the storm getting closer now?
Tell me how it feels being out there
A moment's glimpse of his vignette
As he shone a light on the falling wall
Instant pictures form shattered persons
Whenever he leaves there's a tainted mark
Flashbacks of his stark sleep filter out through smoke
Revoking from the past things less provoked
Any which day, there is no relief
Adhesive words, spoken silently
The shattered man
Can you see the storm getting closer now?
Tell me how it feels being out there
I want to stay with you, and I see it clear now
You are giving me no choice
Let the rain pour down
He's holding for the moment of the fall
Stolen knowledge by minds unformed
Regulate the demolition of annexe for the differing thoughts
Discarded sparks left years ago
Evoked a language much more austere
Reverberating with figments
He left a trace of translucence
Shattered man
There's a shattered man in a shattered land
02 Silence (03:47)
This interference's shifting
A soft accent cascading
A second glimpse of falling TVs
Draws me in too easily
Some kind of nonchalance
Contains my will to chance
The avidity of youth
The naïvety of you
Somewhere where silence ended is where I reassemble
My lens to take your photograph
Which I throw away autographed
And there's an illegal tender
And there's a senseless sensor
And there's a notion we don't need
And they leave just like you
Never come undone
You deceive just like me
Next to me
Though I'll never even see you
Next to you
Never seen such beauty
Two persons in a vista
The third one says she's hollow
A moist and lashing spoken tongue
The words silent since I was young
In the flickerlight we're interlaced and face to face
Someone is blurring now, abiding time as I avow
And there's a soft surrender
And there's a stark contender
And there are notions we do need
I will never come undone.
06 Begin and End (04:28)
Don't know inside from upside-down
We praise the famed unwittingly
If we had read that we are but illiterate
What would we do?
Keep inventory of things that we do not owe
Even at a standstill we are spinning round and round
We're lost but found
Nowhere is right here
Talk to us long enough and you will be perplexed
Begin and end
We talked in a language that we didn't understand
Hiding things that were obscure while the people are searching
Leaving our lives, staying in the same location
Proving me to you, proving you to me
Looking at pictures of people we do not know
A first preview of something we have seen before
A host of one tracing the invisible
We danced side by side to a different monotone
We practised our stargaze every day in the daylight
A plan with no abstract outlined in the concrete
A man opposite us is out-of-sight and unknown
Never far nor all too near.
08 Senseless (04:33)
Ever wonder about which words were said?
Watch slow moving pictures pass instead
I disassembled what was mundane
Looking for what's left and does remain
I challenge the truth,
I'm fighting illusions
Come, let's be receptive
To all the senseless delusions
Moments that bore the years of youth
Now a hintless trace of me and you
Synchronise our words that are sincere
Articulated in ways hard to hear
Let us recognise the end
Seal it from within
I know love did confound us then
And there's no one there, all alone again
Never will I leave before all's been said and done
And I turn to you: "Can you see the fading sun?"
09 Exile (04:02)
Synchronise the flow of intersections
Catalogue all still heartbeats
Franchise the machinations of
The bourgeois-fangled reverie
Gleaming in flamboyancy
Resign to solid chrome
Ohmic opposition is futile
And impedes upon ideas worthwhile
Delicate, infallible construction
We know now what destructiveness comes from
We are living - there's no deed in indulgence
A faded glory, relying on 'Me and Mine'
The exile from human ecstasy
To a place where we're engineered
Seminars on entangled escalators
Meetings with silent translators
A flashback of dystopia
Warning in sleep with a recurring trace
All the fragments and segments
Of fluid sequences
The pretence of a universal race
Not made of metal is moot
Delicate, infallible construction
We know now what destructiveness comes from
10 Disintegration (04:48)
It's blurring out of sight
The faces flickering in the
tinsel light on the esplanades
Fluid and vanishing
Dissolving, hiding things
In your room, after the scene,
when the faces shift
Into someone else
The arcade is
echoing
In a shattered self, the figure's
shimmering
Alter all the static thoughts
Into
something less than what was sought
The splendour of
within
Inner helplessness no more
Empty habits cure
the needs
Solely to concede
Never disagree
Seek
obscurity in lucidity
My identity is dying,
Someone said: "Can you believe this line?"
And for all I
know there's a cure
Faltering, reversing forward
Sentiment's never odd or even
The minds are solid as
liquid
It's reverberant and faint
Vaguely
luminous
Everything has changed
And nothing is the
same
11 Debris (05:03)
While he was asleep holding her hand
The dreams
smouldered
She opened her heart, he tore it apart
Gazed into his smile
He said he had constraint
He was ostracised and feint
She had gone over and
under
A tattoo of a loser
These are the rings that
fell apart
These are the things that tore his heart
These were the dreams that he was causing
These were the
gleams that she was pausing
We're nothing but
debris
Floating on a silver lake
There's nothing
left to take
As we slowly fall apart
We unite you
through me
As we separate with fate
We're nothing
but debris
Her words confound, dim and unsound
Daring the logic
Defying off-hand, nothing unplanned
Phase into the vile
Let me speak again, pursue the
praise - not too soon
In two yields construed by me and
you
Tracing the cause and case
As we stand here face
to face
Simple twofoldness is our brace
That makes it
feel like you and me
Opportunity isn't what we
lost
We have lost our senses
Walk with me now to
another place
Where no one else has been before
Carico i commenti... con calma
Altre recensioni
Di DarKNight
Questo "Storm" mi ha molto deluso, risultando notevolmente più falso del precedente "Assembly".
Peccato vederla truccata in modo orripilante nel video di "Storm", la titletrack, mentre cerca di essere sensuale (non riuscendoci minimamente).
