Tristania: Illumination
A year or two ago on the Caelum et Terra blog there was a discussion of guilty pleasures, with accompanying revelations. Being Catholics, we were careful to specify that we did not mean sinful pleasures—sin is sin, and when you sin you go to confession and try your best not to do it again; you don’t put it in the fridge with the intention of taking an occasional bite or sip. A guilty pleasure is one that isn’t a sin but in some way goes against your better judgment: if it’s food, maybe it isn’t good for your health or your waistline, like a bag of cheese curls; if it’s art, maybe it’s something of which your critical faculties can’t approve but which you nevertheless enjoy, like an old episode of Magnum P.I..
For my part, the thing that came immediately to mind when the topic was suggested was heavy metal music. I’m fascinated by sound for its own sake, and the dense, massive power and weight of the bass and guitar combination in metal is particularly fascinating—it’s as if someone had figured out how to organize thunderclaps. This music has never been something I wanted to hear very often, because in most of it the elements of music beyond the thunderclaps are pretty deficient, limited to the expression of rage and hostility. And the lyrics tend toward the hateful and violent, sometimes even the Satanic, and not in a tongue-in-cheek way.
A few years ago, thanks to eMusic, I discovered a sub-genre that I actually like and—I’m admitting here for the first time—has mostly moved out of the category of guilty pleasure. Sometimes referred to as gothic or symphonic metal, it adds melody, variety, and contrast, even subtlety, to the basic format, incorporating keyboards, strings, maybe even the occasional choir, and some of the techniques and ambitions of progressive rock. A sub-sub-genre sometimes described as the “beauty and the beast” style adds female vocals which typically are near-classical in their range and purity. Its atmosphere is not one of evil and violence but a gloomy, occasionally morbid, romanticism.
Of the bands of this type that I’ve heard, my favorite is Tristania. Considering that I have four of their five full-length albums, it would be dishonest at this point to pretend I’m not a fan. It’s true that I got the first three from eMusic for a negligible sum, when eMusic offered unlimited downloads for ten dollars a month. And it’s true that I don’t listen to them all that much, because their intensity wears on me after twenty minutes or so. And it’s true that much of their music—almost all their earlier albums—is marred by the presence of the so-called “death grunt” male vocal, which can best be described as the sound of a very large, very hostile Cookie Monster. But the interplay of the classic metal elements with the lovely soaring vocals of Vibeke Stene can be beautiful and very potent. I have half-jokingly described them as the Fairport Convention of metal. (Alas, Vibeke left the band last winter; one hopes they’ll find someone comparable.)
Their latest, Illumination, is an album very much worth full cd price. And my remark above about listening to them in small doses doesn’t really apply here, as the intensity is frequently moderated by quieter passages, and Beauty is given some really affecting melodies. They’ve gradually been leaving behind more and more of the conventions of metal and, as the AMG reviewer said, have almost re-invented the gothic romanticism of ‘80s bands like Bauhaus, Xymox, and the Sisters of Mercy (albeit with more power chords than synths). The mood here is predominantly one of melancholy, yearning, and regret, though there are occasional moments of bitterness and a couple of anti-Christian sentiments. As I wrote to a friend, I wish they didn’t think God is their enemy. I often think that people like them would be very committed Christians if they could ever get past their prejudices against the faith, because they seem to passionately desire what is real. The song “Sacrilege” reveals the misunderstanding: introduced by what seems to be a somewhat insipid Christian hymn, it defies the religion which they think would crush them. If they only knew…. In spite of that, I think they’re worth listening to, although certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. Their music is gloomy but, as the title of this album suggests, it does not hate the light:
But you must not fear the dark
I will watch over your sleep
Until the morning comes
(“Lotus”)
No doubt I’m reading too much into those lines, but they’re a good description of the way I feel when praying for someone I care about, especially those who may not be praying for themselves.
Here are: Illumination on eMusic, the official band site, and the MySpace page (very slow to load, but allows you to hear one of my favorite songs from Illumination, “Mercyside”).
And here’s a link to that CetT thread.
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Light On Dark Water 
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