Song Review: "My Lost Lenore" by Tristania

Greetings. My apologies for my absence these past few days. This has been caused by having to "job-hunt" due to an imminent redundancy/lay-off. I work for a major travel company (very well-known beginning with "E") who have decided to sell all our jobs out to a cheapo call centre in India. So if you were considering booking with said Globally renowned travel company - please bear in mind what they do to people's jobs, all in the name of a quick buck/pound/Euro. Anyway.my rant over for the day let us return to the world of all things Gothic.

Today, I shall share with you the song "My Lost Lenore" by Norwegian Gothic legends, Tristania. The song has a very Poe-like lyrical quality (as you would expect from the title n'est ce pas?). The song is underpinned by a sweeping piano riff which has this habit of getting inside your head and not shifting. It has a wonderfully neo-Victorian feel to it. There is then an interplay between the soprano vocals of Vibeke Stene and the growl vocals of Morten Veland. The vocals here are very high quality and avoid the extremes of other such genre bands. The interplay between the ethereal and the Earthly is great and creates a nicely Gothic tone. The song is taken from the album "Widow's Weeds" which was Tristania's first major album release way back in 1998 and was a pivotal and highly influential album on the Gothic Metal scene as it stands today with its combination of orchestral, choral and ethereal elements overlaid on top of doom-metal and black-metal elements. The song with it's lyrical content of a mourning and death and love beyond the grave will certainly remind of you of Poe's poem "Lenore" and also his short story "The Tomb of Ligeia"....and to my mind, also Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights".

I leave you with the video I found on YouTube

Until next time, may the wind howl through your bare trees and a fog linger over the tombs of old that exist in the clearing in the depths of a dark and barren wood; may the full moon shine her silvery, beautiful light on your footsteps....and a raven's raucous caw be the melancholic melody that haunts your ears. As always, thank you for reading,