TEARS LAID IN EARTH

I have always regarded this album as one of the best albums ever released by a Norwegian band. Until I picked this album up again, that is.............. This album, and the Tragedies album by Funeral (released on my record label, I must confess), very much started the whole female vox goth/doom metal scene. So much that the guys and the girl in the horrible Nightwish left their chess boards and took up instruments instead. The same goes for countless other acts. When Nightwish cashed in, the originators lost out and became a forgotten band. This due to some commercial issues with the band and their record label.

The music, then........... I have been listening to this records perhaps hundreds of time. Even when this band went public and called me a headcase (which did hurt !!......... although what they said back in 1995 is true), I was still listening to this album. Me and The 3rd And The Mortal is not on speaking terms and will never ever be on speaking terms, I guess. So to preserve my dignity; here comes a hatchet job and a return of the compliments paid by the band.

Well, not really......... I got the album the day it was released and back then; I thought it was the second coming of Jesus Christ. But almost 16 years later, I can see that this album has some flaws. Mainly the vocals being far too much in the front of the mix. Kari Rueslaatten have a nice voice, but it is simply to overpowering on this album. The rest of the instruments and the sound is somewhere between a chamber orchestra, a jazz-band, a rock band and a doom metal band. This album includes a lot of influences. But the vocals are strangling these elements. The album sounds a bit dated and under-produced today. It sounds like a low-budget recording (which in fact it is).

The songs....... I really like them. Maybe because I have been listening too much to this album. I think they were innovative back in 1993. I still think they are good. I think the songs is the proto-type of what we can call Norwegian melancholia. The cover art really describe this album very well. Not much joy here, although it is not as dark as the other masterpiece from that era; Funeral's Tragedies. I really like this album a lot and it is probably on my desert islands discs list. Therefore; I disagree with everyone else and gives it four points.

On a final note: I think it is a great, great shame that this band never really made it like Dimmu Borgir and Satyricon did. In the history of the Norwegian metal scene; this is the greatest injustice of them all.