The metal circus is coming to town!

This is my review for A New Dimension of Might by Trail of Tears, which I originally made for Encyclopaedia Metallum, AKA the Metal Archives. The original page can be found here

I don’t know why there isn’t a review for this album yet. Seriously, it blows my mind that such a small amount of people would get a chance to enjoy it yet. Metal purists may not have the taste for such a piece of work, since it is a black/gothic metal album with electrogothic elements. However, said elements work together to an advantage along with the traditional Beauty and the Beast vocal style (though Ronny, the growler, does quite a bit of clean singing himself, and he is a stronger presence than the clean female vocalist Catherine throughout the album).

The opener is the track “Ecstatic.” It basically is the start of a wonderful showcase of talents between the choir that is used throughout the entire album, and the female and male vocalists. The emotionlessness of the choir and their use of the same notes, strangely, fits nicely with the more emotive side of this album like a piece of the puzzle that adds a bit more colour to an already colourful image. And by “colourful image,” I mean something that is different than what you’d hear with a lot of extreme gothic metal combo bands, though it is not rare: the electrogothic and odd circus-like elements added to the music, which is put together in perfect harmony with the metal elements. Seriously, if there was a metal circus, A New Dimension of Might would probably be the soundtrack. Look out, Cirque de Soleil! (Could you imagine metalheads headbanging at a circus? Anyway, back to the music).

We’ll skip over to the tracks “Denial and Pride,” “The Call of Lust,” and, “Splendid Coma Visions,” because they show the strongest relation between the music and the vocals used. Devious, full of a lustful energy that gothic music is known to have (which the second title fits with well), and memorable, there’s not much left to be desired here. I couldn’t help but accidentally shout “die!” along to the constant electronically modified growls of “die!” several times that were placed in one section, to my mother’s horror (let’s just say she started thinking I was crazy for a moment there). However, let it be known that much of all of the growls aren’t modified, and only modified in very sparse amounts and in tasteful places, where it would belong.

Next, the Faith No More cover at the end, “Caffeine,” or as I have it, “Pista 10” (don’t know why there was that name change). If you’re a Mike Patton fan and even the experimentation above wouldn’t satisfy you, you might at least want to check out this cover. It shows that even a serious band like Trail of Tears can have a bit of fun with their music and still make it feel like a perfect fit even when they didn’t write the song themselves. Ronny does a great job with clean vocals in this track, and Catherine supports him well with backup vocals. It felt like a Faith No More song, but at the same time, and I know this is really fucking cliché, they “made it their own,” and it ended the album so perfectly. Patton would be proud.

Lastly, the tracks in between “Ecstatic” and “Denial and Pride” were quite exceptionally good, but they didn’t stand out to me as much as the ones listed. It’s a worthy album to purchase. 87% is a really high rating, coming from me, and I wouldn’t mind if anyone else reviewed this album with a higher rating, so long as they do it with good reason.