Alright, we’re closing in on the end of this series discussing the Theatre of Tragedy discography, and today’s focus is the band’s seventh full-length album Forever Is the World, released September 18, 2009 on AFM Records. Pictured in the post is the Mexican pressing by Scarecrow Records, which comes with “Empty” as a bonus track, and Addenda as a whole second bonus CD (this EP will get its own installment in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!). Forever Is the World is the one and only Theatre of Tragedy album released while I was already a gothic metal fan, but it’s also among their works that I’ve interacted with the least. For some reason, I have always found forming an opinion on this album difficult (which is why this post took so God damn long!), so I’m curious to hear what others took away from it.
Forever Is the World is firmly rooted in gothic metal traditions and does away with a lot of the commercial preoccupations the band had on Storm. Not to say that it’s some crazy extreme metal album, it is a good example of simple heavy metal with tons of goth rock atmosphere, classical piano, and programmed strings and electronics to fill out the sound. This album does see the return of some genuine doom metal riffing and melodies, the first since Aégis in 1998, but mostly in the album opener “Hide and Seek”, and the sorrowful mid-cut “Frozen”. Aside from this doom metal reprise, there are a few ways that Theatre of Tragedy pay homage to their past incarnations: there’s the return of harsh vocals to bring back that proper “beauty and the beast” vocal style that ToT helped pioneer in the 90s (more on the vocals later), and “Astray” sounds like a song written for Musique (2000) or Assembly (2002) given the gothic metal treatment with its choppy talk singing.
I find that all of the songs are good to great as stand alone pieces, but when collected in a comprehensive whole, the experience takes a bit of a downturn. This is mostly because the songs struggle to differentiate themselves, a lot of the album can come off as sounding very same-y. Part of this is exacerbated by the vocal performances. There seems to be a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to the vocals on this album, like ToT couldn’t decide if they wanted to be female-fronted, dual lead vocals, beauty and the beast… Raymond Rohonyi only appears on about half the album, and sometimes his entire appearance will make up a single verse. He does some growling, talk-singing, and some actual sing-singing, normally I’d commend his versatility, but considering how infrequent his vocal contributions are, it just comes off as slightly unfocused. With Rohonyi taking a sizeable step back in vocal presence, that leaves co-vocalist Nell Sigland to take lead on a lot of the album. Her performance is fine, she does what she always does, but she’s not the most dynamic singer which contributes a lot to the lack of differentiation across the album’s run time.
I find myself a little conflicted about this album. Whereas something like Musique is obviously flawed, Forever Is the World's pitfalls are more nuanced (and I’m not talking about the mix, we all know it’s too loud, but I didn’t notice any huge distortion. It’s not like Vinland Saga or After Forever, those albums have crazy loudness problems). It’s a good collection of well-constructed music, and I would recommend it to people as a good example of gothic metal: the beauty and the beast sections are wonderfully done, the main hook of “Revolution” is cool and sexy, the build and climax of “Illusions” is so good and dramatic, there’s a lot to enjoy here. There’s a certain lack of energy that heavily foreshadows this band’s impending dissolution. It’s a little comical that the final words of the album are “it has just begun…” when every song sounds like a bittersweet farewell.
Best songs: “Hide and Seek”, “Hollow”, “Astray”, “Illusions”
Worst songs: “A Nine Days Wonder”, “Frozen”
Again, the album is good. It’s a nice send-off despite sounding too much like it’s trying to be that, but ultimately I think this band has done better stuff. I’m giving this album a trepidatious 8 out of 10. Now, having gotten very well acquainted with all of Theatre of Tragedy's studio albums, my ranking looks like this:
- Aégis (1998)
- Storm (2006)
- A Rose for the Dead (1997)
- Theatre of Tragedy (1995)
- Forever Is the World (2009)
- Musique (2000)
- Velvet Darkness They Fear (1996)
- Assembly (2002)
