Tristania's music is usually classified as gothic metal with doom metal influences, due to its strong ties with the genre's history, and the band making use of styles and traits typical of the gothic metal genre.
On their first releases the band had a sound based on black metal riffs with dominant eerie keyboard and powerful drums, which releases Tristania put a lot of focus around operatic female vocals, haunting choruses and classical instruments such as pipe organ, flutes and violins. Those gothic elements enrich their fast-paced heavy black metal riffing giving it added depth.
Tristania uses heavy black metal riffs with atmospheric keyboard and choirs. There was a bigger focus on the death vocals of Morten Veland. A strong influence in their music is doom metal, which can be heard in the slow, melancholic riffing. This combination of death vocals with female operatics and majestic gothic choruses is believed by many fans to have reached its pinnacle on their Beyond the Veil album.
In recent years Tristania stepped back from the bombastic layer-over-layer productions and focused more on balancing the various vocal styles and progressing their sound without losing the overall feeling.
On their fourth album Ashes the vocal duties were done by the following:
(Operatic) female vocals - provided by Vibeke Stene.
Death Vocals (grunts, growls and screams) - done by Kjetil Ingebrethsen and guitarist Anders Høyvik Hidle.
Clean vocals (hollow baritone) - provided by Østen Bergøy.
Their newest album, Illumination, featured the same vocalists minus Kjetil. The amount grunts on the the said album is very reduced when compared to their previous work, and the ones that do appear are courtesy of Vorph from the band Samael.
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Biography
Tristania was formed at the end of 1996 by Morten Veland, Einar Moen and Kenneth Olsson from the remains of their previous band Uzi Suicide. Later, Anders H. Hidle and Vibeke Stene joined the band, along with bassist Rune Osterhus. In May 1997 their first EP, Tristania, was released. The same year Tristania released its first full length album, Widow's Weeds. A year later, following the Angina single, they recorded their second full length album, titled Beyond the Veil, which is thought by many fans to be not only the best Tristania project but also the album which best represents the band's sound. The music is considered very atmospheric and full of deep melodic passion. Morten Veland was by then almost like a leader to the group, as he composed most of their works, wrote lyrics, played guitar and sang growling vocals. He was fired (according to his version of events) from the band after the release of Beyond the Veil due to what the remaining members refer to only as "musical and social differences".
In 2001 their third album, World of Glass was released. This album was a little different in style and the departure of Veland was significant, as the sound of this album was a combination of typical 'Tristanian' sound. The growling vocals on this album were sung by Ronny Thorsen, a member of Trail of Tears, and the clean vocals were sung by Jan Kenneth Barkved and Østen Bergøy. Bergøy then joined the band as a permanent member, and so did Kjetil Ingebrethsen, who was in charge of singing growling vocals.
The band's fourth album – Ashes (2005) – was the first of Tristania's albums on the SPV label after their contract with Napalm Records expired. The album takes the once heavily atmospheric gothic sound of the band and replaces it with a decidedly more progressive style. The choirs are gone, as are the more challenging vocal parts reminiscent of World of Glass and Beyond the Veil. Hidle and Einar Moen add their vocals to certain tracks on the album. Two of the songs were actually written by the Tristania.com webmaster, Kjartan Hermansen ("Libre" and "Circus") while the song "The Wretched" is based on "Ascending: Descending" – a poem by Hermansen. Also on Ashes, the violins of Pete Johansen – which so often accompanied the previous Tristania albums – were replaced by the cello melodies of Hans Josef Groh. The album marked a lyrical and musical simplification of the band from the days of Morten Veland, more so than the first album without Veland, World of Glass.
The Ashes Tour in Europe (minus Einar Moen, who remained at home to work on more material for the band, but is still an active member) brought about another change for the band, the addition of a second guitarist – Svein Terje Solvang – who previously played with the band for touring purposes. His addition to the band as a permanent member in May 2005 is the first time Tristania has had a two-guitarist team since Beyond the Veil.
In April 2006, Kjetil Ingebrethsen left Tristania to embark on a lower level musical career.
On February 27 2007, Vibeke Stene left the band due to personal reasons.
Post je objavljen 16.08.2007. u 18:38 sati.