Originally written for soundshock.net.
2010 should be considered a dark year for melodic metal. Why? Because Norwegian goth-metal vanguards Theatre of Tragedy are calling it quits in October. Formed in 1993, Theatre of Tragedy are credited as the first known metal band to consistently utilise a soprano voice alongside a growling counterpart. Now, after seventeen years the curtain falls on Theatre of Tragedy as the line up struggles to operate the band in sync with their families and careers. Original drummer, Hein Frode Hansen and guitarist Vegard Thorsen discuss the band’s final output and a nostalgic look at all the band has accomplished.
It’s a warm afternoon in Camden and Hein Frode Hansen and Vegard Thorsen are sitting in a pub with grins on their faces. Not very “goth” but Theatre of Tragedy have never been a band to adhere so closely to convention. The London date of their farewell tour has dawned upon the capital. However, the tour has not been doing as well as the band anticipated. “I could lie to you and say we have full houses everywhere but not really.” Hein’s honesty vividly shines through. “It’s like 100, 150 [attendees]. I was thinking that people were thinking this could be the last chance to see [Theatre of Tragedy] but maybe they think it’ll be like a funeral. They’re not good.”
To mark the band’s retirement, a new EP titled ‘Addendum’ has been issued. It comes with a re-issue of the Norwegians’ final album ‘Forever is the World’, released last year. The finality of the album suggests that the band knew they were to call it quits before they began work on this album. Hanson confirms: “We knew it was going to be our last record when we recorded it so we did a lot of stuff on
the recording on purpose to make it like closure.” Indeed, it does sound like the swansong of a band, reflecting on its past, particularly with vocalist Raymond István Rohonyi utilising growls after a prolonged absence. Thorsen talks fondly of the remainder of the band’s shock: “Raymond decided “Fuck you all! I’m going to do something new which is old.” Hanson elaborates: “It really blew me away. I didn’t think he had it in him to do that kind of vocals so we were really surprised.”There are a lot of nods towards Theatre of Tragedy’s varied past on their curtain calling album. From their early days as a romantic yet overcast gothic metal band through their electronic flirtations right to their modern gothic rock sound. “There’s nothing really new on there but it’s sort of like a mixture between all of the stuff we’ve done throughout our career without being in the middle of the ‘90s. I think an album in 2009, without being nostalgic about it and copying ourselves – that was our idea. We didn’t really set out to do it. We have many really weird ways of writing records throughout our career...mostly bad, actually. But this time around we said “Screw it. Let’s just try everything. No rules, no bullshit.” We didn’t have any specific recipe for it,” Hansen details.
Thorsen observes: “When we were doing the ‘Storm’ album we were trying not to be really aggressive. We tried to be energetic and keep the pace up. It gets short of breath after a while so we try to let our songs live their own lives, try to come together somehow. The funny thing with the record is if you take single songs and listen to them, they’re so-so but if you take the entire album as a whole, it works a lot better.”
The title ‘Forever is the World’ isn’t as conspicuous in meaning as one might initially think. Hansen enlightens by stating: “We really have a hard time settling on what to call our records. We played around a bit and ‘Forever is the World’ was the least terrible choice. We were all a bit low. This is it, this is final. There was lots of doom and gloom but there is a glimmer of hope or something. It fits very well with the album. It doesn’t really make any sense. ‘Forever is the world’. It’s not. It’s poetic nonsense. It’s actually a...Biblical quote?” Thorsen knows the answer: “Only man ends but forever is the world.”
The good news for Theatre of Tragedy fans is that the band will certainly be continuing with musical endeavours, possibly collectively. “We have good chemistry, good references and we work well together. We probably won’t do concerts or doing stuff live and touring, but we’ll probably be doing stuff together,” Thorsen reports.
Of course, the musicians have racked up their fair share of fond and less attractive moments. Thorsen recounts a particularly vivid scene: “The first album I participated on, ‘Assembly’, when we stayed in a barn in the middle of the Finnish forests with no indoor plumbing...that was the worst. It was amazing fun but it was really gruelling from day to day. You couldn’t wash your hands; you had to go to the main building. You couldn’t go to the loo; you had to go to the main building. We had to be really quiet when recording vocals because it was just downstairs and the floorboards were really creaking.”
Hansen counteracts Thorsen with a positive experience: “I think Beirut was pretty good. Standing on stage in Beirut was unbelievable. Looking at the Mediterranean Sea on stage in the sun doing the sound check there, which was pretty amazing. We were the first band beside The Scorpions or something like that that played there. They just built a complete stage set up for us with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea. We were like “Beirut? Do we have any fans there?” We get on stage and there were like 2000 people there. It was really amazing.”
Theatre of Tragedy have accomplished a lot but not all they wanted to. Thorsen regrets the fact that they never toured Japan, or more touring generally. Hansen reflects: “Now we’re older and greyer and more exhausted so it’s a little bit why we’re breaking up as well. It’s really difficult to combine doing Theatre of Tragedy and giving it the attention it deserves. Theatre of Tragedy is like a life on its own, the way I see it, and it deserves everybody’s full attention. People are not able to do that. It would be disloyal to the fans [to] go four years for every record and do one tour every four years and it’s quite a lot of work.” Returning to the centrepiece as to why the split is inevitable, Thorsen elaborates: “I think if Theatre of Tragedy as a band was to continue we’d have to put more work into it. Do more touring, do more live shows but we can’t. We just don’t have time and resources to do it. It’s better and more respectful in a way to call it quits and leave it as it is. Have some fun before the end and also while we’re still friends.”
The band has known about this split since last May but could not officially state their intentions due to the relationship with their record label. “We couldn’t say “Give us all this money so we can make this record but really afterwards, we will break up.” So we had to keep everything quiet. Obviously, the record label isn’t too happy about it but...oh well,” Thorsen shrugs.
October 2nd 2010 in Stavanger will be the final performance for Theatre of Tragedy. They will be flying in their best light technician from Germany and will play a set representing all of their albums. Fortunately for those unable to book a flight for Norway, the show will be filmed for a DVD. At least the band acknowledges how important they have been in the metal world. “We were the first doing [growls and soprano vocals] 50/50. There were bands doing it before; Paradise Lost were doing it on the first record but they only had a guest singer. We were the first one to have a full time member of the band being a lead singer. It’s weird now because you’ve got all these bands. Back in the day when we started out, no English press would touch us with gloves. People hated every European band that did the gothic style. We were ridiculed so much from Kerrang and all the English press. It’s hilarious and now they’re all over the gothic scene. It’s a bit strange standing here 17 years down the road. I’m not going to claim responsibility for the whole scene. That would be a bit megalomaniac but at least I’ll say that you’ll find a Theatre of Tragedy CD in all these bands’ collections. Even Evanescence secretly has a Theatre of Tragedy CD stashed somewhere,” Hansen says with a smile. Theatre of Tragedy will be horrendously missed but at least they still have their integrity.
