Artist: Tarja
Title: Colours In The Dark
Genre: Classical Crossover/ Symphonic Metal
Release Date: 30th August 2013
Label: earMusic
Album Review
TARJA TURUNEN is a classically trained soprano, mostly known from her time with NIGHTWISH, after acrimonious split with the band she set off on her solo career. ‘Colours In The Dark’ is her fourth album in this pursuit. It starts with a song that has been rightly singled out ‘Victim of Ritual’, theatrical, epic in scope. Yet after it comes a glitch – music is of a good quality due to musicianship of the selected members, It’s harder and rockier to stir out of sitting purely in Symphonic Metal booth, but it feels empty, without inspiration and there merely to lend TARJA a platform for her voice. Let’s have a thought experiment. Let us suppose you own a Ferrari. Do you drive it to dispose rubbish in the bin in the corner of the street? Do you deliver the post with it? Do you drive around the block in order to buy fags from the mini-market?
Furthermore, let us assume that you don’t live in a downtrodden village where everyone else is having junk-with-wheels even though they work hard for it, but in a place where there are plenty of residents owning cars from Porsche to Bugatti. Tarja lives in the latter while she pretends to be in the former. It is obvious that she doesn’t know what to do with her voice and she spends her talent in pure show-offs for the masses. I have a suspicion she refused career in classical music because she wouldn’t be able to have it her own way. Where it comes to her voice she has nothing to prove, but where it comes to songwriting, there’s plenty of work to do if she could only be bothered – or perhaps bury the hatchet with NIGHTWISH but that will never happen – too much of an ego clash and grudge bearing on both sides. It’s a pleasant album still, but it just fails to excite me and feels far too formulaic to commend it on artistic merit.
Tracklist
01. Victim of Ritual
02. 500 Letters
03. Lucid Dreamer
04. Never Enough
05. Mystique Voyage
06. Darkness
07. Deliverance
08. Neverlight
09. Until Silence
10. Medusa
Line-up
Tarja Turunen – lead vocals, piano
Alex Schlopp & Julian Barrett – guitar
Kevin Chown & Dough Wismbish – bass
Christian Kretschmar – keyboards
Mike Terrana – drums
Max Lilja – cello
Websites
https://www.facebook.com/tarjaofficial / http://www.tarjaturunen.com
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 6
Sound: 8
Total: 7 / 10
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