u/LigeiaNoire

Credits to Nicholas.

This channel also has Sleeping Sun, Anemoia and Ohne Dich for your perusal.

A clip from the Festival 1001 notes in Limoges.

I was researching this festival a bit, it seems to be focused on classical music with a twist or a modern approach it seems. I liked it a lot that Tarja branched out from the usual festivals this Summer, and is doing a semi classical concert here and there.

I had never heard of Mr. Horvath before this Tarja collaboration. His résumé is surely impressive, I am sure playing this répertoire is refreshing for him. I do have to say that from what I have seen, he is not really accompanying the vocals, he is doing his own thing.

He plays amazingly, if it is even needed to be pointed out.

Both Kuolema and Sleeping Sun sound almost unrecognizable though. They are beautiful and simple melodies. But he shifts them into something else. I think it worked very well on Anemoia but here it feels overplayed.

Tarja sounds good but I did not feel they were in sync, or the format worked all too well. Usually pianists accompany the singer but it seems to me he is used to doing his own acrobatics by himself.

Frisson Noir collector's box

If you are still interested in a Frisson Noire review, I have a long one for you.

 

Track by track

Intro and outro, even though I am not the biggest fan of My Winter Storm, I loved the way in which it was structured, the intros and outros, the interludes, so it was a nice surprise to have an intro and outro here signalling the experience as something special, somewhat like a ceremony.

1-      Frisson Noir: Seriously heavy song, incredibly tight, especially the last section being so nicely layered. Orchestra, guitar, drums, it is probably one of her best album openers. Nice tidbits of French too.
The vocals throughout the album were a surprise, I was expecting way more experimentation, chest voice, and she pretty much does her standard Once voice mode all the way through. This non-offensive, light vocal delivery
The song just kicks hard, it is one of my favourites;

2-      Eternal return, the title brought Mircea Eliade and Nietzsche to mind.
Another incredibly heavy, fast paced song;
The house remembers what a great line.
Reminds me of Crying moon a lot with the sprinkling of the Silent Masquerade avant-garde vocalizations. These were the things I was looking for, and I wish there was more of it. Another banger, the album keeps putting the pedal to the metal.  Awesome guitar and drum duel in the middle.
Of course the beautiful swan Tarja embodies on the Saint-Saëns interlude is what brings the song home. Beyond beautiful, crystalline and melodious. Tarja showing her classical chops both in the lyrical part and the classical Easter egg.

3-      Leap of faith: always a pleasure to hear Mr. Hietala, this man was born to sing, he is effortlessly melodious. Not a huge fan of their duets though. Left in Mars was very lacklustre, and their last tour left me seriously hang hovered from their live presentations.
However, this song is both catchy and layered enough to give back a lot of interesting elements and pure musical beauty.
The section in which Tarja vocalizes, as just another instrument, while the strings take front seat is a testament to her ability to build a song from top to bottom without ever loosing momentum;
I liked it a lot, but I do not feel blood and tears in it;

4-      At Sea: The crowing jewel of the album, the epic of her career, the best song in there.
Just the very start of it, the first run of the pianist’s fingers over those keys… give me shivers, then strings join in, and you are just rooted in place. The album name is incredibly fitting.
It was a serious bold move to make this song into the first single.
Merikanto was a huge surprise for me. I ended up buying his music because of this. Incredibly beautiful piano work.
This is the first song where Tarja finally risks more interesting vocals. Less polished, rawer, chestier singing. The lyrics have a very personal feel to it too.
The first time I listened to this song it was a shock.
The piano composition and execution during the whole song, especially the solo, of course, surpasses the genius solo that Izumi played during Innocence. It is virtuoso playing in full force.
Having this song as the lead single, made me think the album was going into a more experimental and darker direction, but it was the complete opposite of the previous albums.
Lots of moving parts in this song, the orchestra, the violin, the drums, the guitar, but they all belong together, they all give succession to each other in a fluid way without feeling out of place.
The aggressive dangerous sea, taken by the calmer one after the storm with a simpler, cleaner and delicate piano. Backing vocals with clean head voice placement. And the last section, the sea returns, but not aggressive or calm, but in a playful way, almost like a Burton gothic, playful soundtrack. The violin duet with the vocals is my favourite vocal moment of the album. It is dazzling, the vocals are full on head voice, the vibrato is bouncy, full, strong, melodious, it is Tarja in full splendour;

5-      Blaze Forever: The best lyrics of the album. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she had done all the lyrics by herself.
Undertaker is my favourite song of hers, alongside with its lyrics, but I can tell, just by the vocabulary and the syntax that a native speaker had more than one finger in it. Just like in You and I. Both are pure poetry, and that is not easy to do. In this album, there are lots of nice lines, but lots of contrived sentences and odd word choices, but the fact she threw herself into doing this, as a non-native English speaker is truly remarkable, and the fact that the lyrics are left as she intended them to be without overly correcting them, only makes the progress more visible when you reach this song.
This is one of my favourites. Strong structure, great chorus. The skeleton of the song, just like the first two is just pure heaviness with finesse. The way the drum drops and kicks, drops and kicks, constantly punching. It is delicious.
The reversed verses instantly brought to memory Laura from Twin Peaks, especially the Laura 30 years later in the black lodge, with the checkered floor, because of the way Tarja speaks the lyrics, and does not sing them. Quite eerie;

6-      The Trace Outlives: I was so very curious about this one.
It is another stunner. Again the kick and drop drums really hit me hard, it is just so good.
It is another heavy, drum oriented song, fast paced, it just goes, goes, and goes.
The lyrics are very thought provoking I have been a bad girl, stealing thrills that I have never dared before. It makes you think things. Things.
The choir/backing vocals remind me of a song on My Winter Storm, but I cannot recall the one.
We finally get a more interesting vocal approach. Defiant, even sensuous, playful.
The Japanese instrument is a nice groovy addition to the bass.
The chorus is beautiful.

7-      Tango: I had pretty high expectations for this one. When seeing that Tarja was finally collaborating with Apocalyptica, it brought to mind the fact that this album is permeated with cello, yet Max ended up not in it, for one reason or the other, just makes me a bit sad, but we got the Finnish boys in here finally.
No need to stress the fact that this collaboration between them was awaited for decades.
The structure of the song does not stand out, the choice to have the drums and orchestra going at the same time the cellos do their solo was not a good one. It is not clean and it drowns them out a bit.
I needed something stunning, something larger than life like the Rise Again with Simone. A heart wrenching song that makes you pull your hair out, like Too many.
Tango is passion, Tango is intense.
Something more classical, more dramatic and less metal focused.
The chorus is so well done though, I appreciate the use of the chest voice again. The staccato is very reminiscent of Deliverance. Throughout the album, the instruments are often at the forefront of the action, however, in this one, the vocals were more exciting than the instrumentation.
It is a nice song, but it fell short. We already know that Apocalyptica and Tarja are great at rock and metal, so I was looking for something riskier, bolder;

8-      Anemoia: My fellow countryman Valter Freitas alongside Flamenco guitar player Bedmar both star in this one.
Unfortunately, this is the least interesting song in the album for me. Of course, in an album of this calibre this is not dissing on this song, at all.
However, I am not a fan of most of Tarja’s ballads. Until Silence, The Living end, Underneath, If you believe, I feel Immortal. They are not here nor there for me, they end up just being nice tunes, but that is it.
I am a huge fan of acoustic guitar, viola and the likes, so having a flamenco guitar in it brought in all these possibilities, specially with Tarja's vocals. Something like Angels falls first.
It instantly reminded me of how good Tarja is in Juarez, which is one of her most poignant performances ever.
Beautiful cello work, clean soprano singing, but the song does not have more going for it. The guitar does some nice arpeggios but it lives alone, on its own.

9-      I Don’t care: Oh my, there was so much expectation for this song from both people that like Dani Filth and the ones that do not. I feel that seriously impeded the song to shine on its own.
I listened to it only twice before getting the CD, so I could get the full experience through the mixture of the album.
The lyrics are very provocative, and I like that a lot.
And guess what, after listening to both versions on the vinyl and the CD, I love this song to bits, the intro is phenomenal, and when the choir joins the drums, magic happens, it is so Cradle adjacent. I love their vocals together, so much clearer in the album version. The beauty and the beast materializing. Joint vocals are made of contrasts, otherwise, what is the point?
Dani’s vocals are fun, exciting and they bring so much texture to the roundness of Tarja’s vocals. Dani does some great raspy singing, not just growls, and it sounds awesome.
Alex’s guitar solo is an absolute beauty.
The only thing I did not like is the silly dub step or whatever happened in there. Also, I wished that in the album version Tarja did not sing along with Dani. The single version where he has the chance to sing alone elevates the song and gives it more diversity. A pet peeve of mine is songs having ten thousand versions. Do not give me alternatives, give me your final composition, the way you envisioned the song.

10-   Against the odds: One of the best songs on the album, its second epic. Long awaited after being used during her concerts.
We finally have Tarja using full head voice, and it just permeates the whole song like never before. Nice fluid progression of the orchestra with the electronic elements creating the crescendo that leads to the first stanza with unusual languid vocals. The refrain here, this chorus….This is probably the most beautiful chorus of the whole album, it gave me all kinds of goose bumps all over. Lots of frisson happening for me.

Conclusion:

Ok, so here we go, my expectations for this album were ungodly high. I have The Shadow Self as my Tarja favourite, closely followed by In the Raw, so waiting 7 years for new music after being so pumped up to see what she would progress to, was hard.

The direction of these last 3 albums, the wardrobe for Frisson, the paintings, the At Sea single, I truly was expecting an album with a darker, more experimental, minor key direction.

I was truly surprised to find out most of the songs, are fast paced, linear in structure, quite heavy, quite pumped, there is not much experimentation going on, nor in music nor vocals.

The atmosphere is heavy metal, confident, and intense but there was little of that melancholy or dark vibe to it from the previous two. The music is epic not raw, the music is heavy and beautiful, but it does not wear the heart on its sleeve like Shadow Play, Love to Hate or Too many.

I was leaning more into a progression from Spirits of the Sea, with more adventurous and experimental elements with the passion of Too many. However, this was probably the tightest and most cohesive album Tarja released to date. Everything is on point, and it goes where it needs to go.

If I needed to showcase Tarja to anyone, this would be the album to brag with.
Tarja is at the top of her game, and it shows. She is not looking to please expectations or to compose to sell, and that is why she is still here, and not just here but at the forefront of the scene on her own merit. I cannot wait to see her live with this album.

 

 

Frisson ranking: 8/10

 

Songs ranking:

 

1-      At sea

2-      Against the odds

3-      Blaze Forever

4-      Frisson Noir

5-      I Don’t care

6-      The Eternal return

7-      The Trace outlives

8-      Leap of faith

9-      Tango

10-   Anemoia

 

Discography ranking:

1-      The Shadow Self

2-      In the Raw

3-      Frisson Noir

4-      Colours in the dark

5-      What Lies Beneath

6-      My Winter Storm

I am also going to link to a professional review that was not shared here yet from Loud magazine in Portugal. This is our oldest and most respected metal news publication.
It is an in-depth and mature and worth sharing review Loud magazine Frisson Noire review