This album is a gem within the gothic genre. The title track is probably one of my all time favorite gothic metal songs. However, as a whole, this album doesn't quite live up to it's reputation. The problem with this album is that as it progresses, it slowly becomes less and less coherent. It never relents in it's innovation and complexity, but whereas all of it fits together during the first half of the album, by the end what we have is a parade of creative ideas weakly bound together. I wish I could prescribe the problem as they need to work harder on editing, to not include parts that don't work, but I don't feel that would save this album, because then the album itself would become a bizarre progression from progressive gothic metal to minimalist gothic metal, and would completely go against what the band is trying to portray. In the end, the only solution is "come up with more consistent ideas."

So, to give an idea of what's going on to the uninitiated: Tristania takes the standard (old) gothic formula, and replaces the death metal influence with a black metal influence, and then throws on a plethora of classical instruments and motifs. To elaborate, we have electronic keyboards emulating several other keyboard instruments (piano, synth, bells), a violin, a small chamber choir, the standard drums, guitars, and bass, topped with a tri-vocal assault between Vibeke singing soprano (quite beautifully too), Morten Veland's growls (which seem rooted in black metal shrieks, but sometimes venture into death metal territory), and clean baritone vocals from Osten Bergoy. All of these are not confined to their stereotypical roles either. Many symphonic metal bands will include classical instruments to play the typical stuff you would hear on that instrument, just to give the music a classical coloring, but Tristania utilizes all of the instruments to their fullest, playing unusual yet beautiful passages.

Tristania manage atmosphere fantastically, especially during the first half of the album. Later on, the decoherence of the album manages to kill the atmosphere a bit. However, even during those parts, this album feels quintessentially gothic, maybe even more so than the standard approach to gothic metal which doesn't incorporate influence from black metal. If more bands had followed in Tristania's footsteps, then perhaps we would have a new subgenre of gothic music, and gothic metal would definitely have more respect within the metal community. This is definitely *the* gothic metal album to recommend to serious fans of black/death metal.

Angina is the worst offender of decoherence in my opinion. Random growls cut into a soft moment, a mellow piano/choir cuts off the heavy riff, a random bass break precedes a violin solo, as if the two had anything to do with each other. It is stitched together by the guitar riff, which is substituted by harmonies that imply it occasionally. As I already mentioned, the title track is amazing, and Aphelion is consistent in all the ways that I described Angina as not being. In the end, this album is a beautiful masterpiece that descends into mild schizophrenia. This album will never make it on to my top tier with such masterpieces like Trail of Tears' Profoundemonium, but it comes damn close.

This isn't what you are going to expect and it might take a few listens to warm up on you, but by the time I had listened to it a few times, I was already singing along. So, this CD differs from previous releases in several ways. They have expanded their sound figuratively and literally. Literally because they added strings and multiple singers. This makes it seem even more grand then previous albums. Figuratively because there is a lot of new elements and ideas in the music. On the very second song, Kahn is singing in a rhythmic style and the guitars have a sort of jolted riff. It is actually very catchy. The music is far from the European power metal sound that they mastered on Epica, and that is good because that sound is starting to wear out. Of course, there are songs that sound like they belong on previous Kamelot releases, such as silence of the darkness, but these songs aren't bad at all. What makes this album great besides what I've already mentioned is that the sound of this album is so utterly mature and dark. The music is in a deeper register, with less testosterone yells, guitar solos, and instrumental acrobatics, but instead a consistent and powerful sound. The orchestration on this album is probably the best of any Kamelot album. The violin solo at the beginning of the album is probably my favorite intro to a power metal album ever. All of the songs almost seem like fairy tales, this album being a brief collection of short stories. Nothing is personal, it is just stories told around a campfire. Everything is intensely interesting, and you are drawn in again and again. Uncle Kahn, please sing me that yarn about the German ship in world war 2. I wanna hear that tragic tale about the lovers and the terminal disease. This is an album to enjoy. The reason it isn't 5 stars is because the second half is a lot weaker than the first, and sometimes the album seems too repetitive. Also, the darkness of the music seems a bit unfitting to the less emotional and more detached fairy tale style (a la Grim, not Disney) that Kamelot is working towards.

This album is in my opinion one of the defining masterpieces of gothic metal. This album is more of a modern fast paced gothic style, while their debut was in more of a slower old-school gothic style, although they both strongly feature symphonic elements. This album is less atmospheric and more progressive than the first one. Although this is a more modern gothic metal album, it has none of the trappings that are in the radio-friendly gothic metal albums from the likes of evanescence (ick!) or early epica. Speaking of epica, this album features their guitarist, Mark Jansen. If you dislike early epica for the way they fetishize corny clichés, then have no fear, because in this band, the other members balance out his terrible ideas, only leaving his best ideas, and Mark Jansen at his best is quite noteworthy, as fans of epica would agree. It is his influence that makes this album gothic, and after he left the band completely shed the gothic sound and switched over to a style that mixes retro industrial with modern symphonic metal. This album is very fast paced for a gothic album, and summons an intensity that is unmatched in the gothic genre. Especially this can be seen in the first song (not counting the intro), Monolith of Doubt. It comes in fast with a rhythmic guitar riff, and layered on with an ascending keyboards riff that is both proud and urgent, and then there is a quick stop, and boom, female vocals like you’ve never heard in metal; loud, clear, intense, and powerful, proud and sad, in a sort of aggressive melancholy. The song goes on, with more fast riffs, a sudden veer into clean arpeggios, with a sort of dramatic tension building, and then a burst back into metal, with the singer topping the wave of tension with a high note sung forcefully as an opera singer does, climaxing the song before it winds down on the first riff. This song is a bit faster than the rest of the album, but it adequately conveys what this album is about. It is proud yet melancholy, passionate yet sensitive, bombastic yet subtle. This album is the perfection of the symphonic goth subgenre, and while I’m sure someday another band may reach a different sort of pinnacle within this genre (and there are non-symphonic goth metal albums I rank up with this one), this will stand at the top of its own style. Nobody will beat this album at its own game. While this album works as a whole so well that it really doesn’t make sense to pick out individual parts, one part that particularly warrants attention is that of the lead vocalist, Floor Jansen (not related to Mark). Although on this album she is still finding her voice, she shines on this album much more than on the debut. Although many female metal vocalists have pretty voices, and maybe even have better voices by classical standards, she stands out for singing with strength. In other words, her voice is far more fitted to metal then the Simone’s, Tarja’s and Sharon den Adel’s of our current symphonic metal. Also worth mentioning are the drums, which feature some very creative cymbal work. The drums are a good lesson for other goth metal bands, where it often feels like the drummer is just a time keeper with no personality at all.

Quite frankly, this is my favorite symphonic metal album, edging past anything by Nightwish and Epica, trumping anything by Within Temptation, and heck, it's even better than kamelot's albums, as hard as that is for me to say. This album absolutely dominates it's genre. Unlike the previous three albums, there is no restraint on this album. They took all of the elements that they worked on in remagine, invisible circles, and exordium, and threw them together in some great blender, and came out with what ought to be a cacophonous mess. The riffs on this album are really bouncy, in a very organic way. I know that probably makes no sense to you, so as an analogy, take Prong's thrash classic Beg to Differ, make the riffs faster with a bit more chugging underneath, and you get an idea of the riffwork, kind of. Make the rhythms a bit less predictable than the average metal album. Not as in Meshuggah, but just a bit more of the starting on off-beats, using notes with dots on the end, that sort of thing. Basically, this album uses dynamic rhythms. Everything about this album is dynamic. That's what makes it exciting. It doesn't repeat itself very much. It is an album of varied sounds and textures, flown fast but not obnoxiously fast, constantly grooving.

The use of the orchestra is very strong on here. It is somewhat cliche just like with most metal bands who use orchestra, but the cliche's are different cliche's than you hear on most metal albums, so it is tolerable. Besides, the orchestra parts are well written. The orchestra isn't used in the same way on any two songs, and provides tone colors to the songs, thus giving each song a different feel. On discord, the orchestra is a proud trumpet lead orchestra, wheras on withering time it is a quicker violin and flute led sound, thus making discord sound loud and proud but making withering time sound darker and more urgent. My only gripe about the orchestra is that it was mixed too far back. I wish it was more present. The performances on this album are the best of any After Forever album. Floor Jansen sings incredibly strongly, probably the most aggressive soprano vocals in metal. She wails like she thinks she's Rob Halford. Usually, with the beauty and beast vocal style, the growls are strong and menacing, and the singing is presented as a contrast, light and beautiful. Floor, on the other hand, overpowers the growls easily, making the grunts seem weak and pathetic (Dreamflight is a great example of this) in comparison. And they are good growls. The rest of the instruments are at their best. You even get to hear some guitar solo finally (but not enough). I kind of wish the drums had more personality, like on decipher, but they are very competently performed and often very complex. The songs are really catchy, but they don't wear out like many catchy songs do. The production is very clean, but not sterile. Although technical, this album is full of soul, and never wearying like Dream Theater can be. The last song on this album gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. It is everything I could hope for in a symphonic metal album.

This album, quite frankly, is terribly overrated. Even Epica themselves have said that their second album is better (of course, that was right after they finished their second album, so maybe they had bias towards it). For those who were fans of After Forever's first 2 albums, the guitarist is the same guitarist, Mark Jansen. After Forever sacked him, and he started his own band called Sahara Dust, which was going to include Helena of note from Trail of Tears, but she left for a different project and Mark Jansen brought in his girlfriend Simone Simmons. He changed the band's name to Epica in tribute to Kamelot's album of the same name, and from there they went on to record this album. I think the biggest problem with this album is Mark, who seems to be the leader of this band for now, and brings both terrible ideas and brilliant ideas to the band, without his bad ideas getting shot down. We have a thicket of clichés so overgrown you can barely breathe, and right when you think it can't get any lamer, some awesome or beautiful part will come in and restore your faith. Then we have things that shouldn't have gotten off the drawing board, for example the spoken sections. Oh, and it is almost all psuedo-intellectual religion bashing, so if you get sick of that, too bad. There is also a song expressing his frustrations with After Forever called run for a fall, so in case you wanted a break from the religion bashing you can have After Forever bashing, yay! (They are now on good terms again) This album is dwarfed by their next 3 albums, and I would almost say it's for collectors/fans only, but it has enough strong points that one can enjoy it without being a fan, especially if you aren't turned off by melodrama and cliches.