Suspiria

I registered specifically to review this album and defend it's honor. This album shares my all time favorite status with World Of Glass by Tristania, and that should give you a hint to my tastes. Suspiria is as gothic as metal gets. The sound is dark, baroque, and moving with a power behind it that could rival Amon Amarth for it's rousing qualities.

Suspiria begins with two tracks showcasing the sound: Operatic vocals, with a deep death metal backdrop too intense to be called doom metal, and catchy as Wagner's finest. Ladies Choice offers a harpsichord and more somber track, and then the album enters a 4 track mini-opera. This segment, despite some great riffs and clever portions, allows the lyrics and recitative to enter hokey realms, and rob the work of it's 100th percentage point in this review. But then the title track and it's classical organ steal it back and begin the trio of songs that make this thing worth buying and listening to over and over. Suspiria is good, but 'Realm of Darkness' is without question my favorite song of all time. It is 'Ride of the Valkyries' for metalheads. It is the song that snapped me out of my pre-metal daze and introduced me to the glory that is this genre. You can find this song on their official sites- hear it and know all you need to know about this album, this band, and the power that music holds. As if that were not enough the final track is close behind in quality and strength.

Make no mistake- this is gothic with a capital G. It's so gothic it pushed my purely gothic tastes. But the quality, the depth, and ability of every theme and leitmotif to catch the listener's attention and hold it to the end justifies every excess of tone. It is dark, it is sad, and it it above all strong. If you want hard and fast and crazy and brutal, look elsewhere. If you want beauty in shadows, or even just another pre-millenial Theatre of Tragedy / early Tristania sort of disc, you can do no better than this.