Theatre of Tragedy

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Theatre of Tragedy is a Norwegian band from Stavanger, originally assembled in 1993 and best known for their earlier albums, which provided a great deal of influence to the gothic metal genre. The band made use of contrasting vocals - male bass vocals (making rare use of death grunts) and female soprano singing - and on their first three albums, presented lyrics written predominantly in Early Modern English. Starting from the album Musique, however, Theatre of Tragedy made drastic changes to its style, which became significantly inspired by the industrial rock genre, abandoning Early Modern English writing and death grunts in the process.

1 Biography
2 Discography
- 2.1 Albums
3 Singles and EPs
4 Line-up
- 4.1 Former members
5 External links

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Biography

Theatre of Tragedy begun when drummer Hein Frode Hansen quit his former band Phobia in 1993 and started looking for a new musical project to play in. A friend of his told Hein that a band called "Suffering Grief" was looking for a new drummer, and after entering in contact with them, he joined the band. At the time, "Suffering Grief" was composed of vocalist Raymond István Rohonyi, keyboard player Lorentz Aspen and guitarists Pål Bjåstad and Tommy Lindahl. No bassist had joined the band yet, but Eirik T. Saltrø had agreed to play with them in live concerts.

After finding a rehearsal place, the band decided to work upon a couple of piano arrangements composed by Lorentz. The vocals, at the time, were mostly entirely composed by raw death grunts.

After composing their first song, "Lament of the Perishing Roses", the band changed its name to "Le Reine Noir" and then to Theatre of Tragedy. They subsequently invited singer Liv Kristine to do female vocals for one song, but quickly invited her to join the band permanently.

In 1994, their first studio demo was recorded, and in 1995, the debut album "Theatre of Tragedy" was released, followed by "Velvet Darkness They Fear" in 1996 and the "Rose for the Dead" EP in 1997, which contained unreleased material from "Velvet Darkness". Arguably, the band reached the apogee of its career in 1998, with the release of the critically acclaimed album "Aégis".

In 2003 Liv Kristine assembled a band (Leaves' Eyes) with her husband Alexander Krull and musicians from his band Atrocity. Later on in August 2003, following Theatre of Tragedy's genre switch to industrial rock in their albums "Musique" (2000) and "Assembly" (2002), the band declared in an official statement [1] on their website, that Liv Kristine was removed from the band's line-up due to "musical differences which could not be bridged". Liv Kristine, for her part, claimed in a statement on her website that she was fired via e-mail, and not personally informed of the fact by any of the band members. [2].

Female singer Nell Sigland (The Crest) joined Theatre of Tragedy on the following year. In winter 2004/2005 a short concert tour (together with Pain, Sirenia and Tiamat) with Nell singing was performed.

The band released their sixth LP "Storm" on March 24th of 2006. The EP to the album's title song was released on Feb. 24th of 2006.

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