Trail of Tears
02/04/2008
Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles, CA
by Travis Baumann
Trail of Tears has been a long time favorite band for me and so this was highly anticipated for around four months when I first saw they were touring. I even investigated their tour mates, Echoes of Eternity and grew to like them quite a bit as well.
Unfortunately, for Los Angeles, the lead singer of Echoes of Eternity got sick and was under doctor's orders to not perform lest she permanently damage her vocal chords. I did not find this out until one band before they were supposed to go on and only then, by asking the merchandise woman where their stuff was. It would not have changed my mind about going because I love Trail of Tears, but it would have been nice to know.
In Echoes of Eternity's spot was a French Canadian band called, Unexpect. Please check out their review on our website with photos as well for more about them but now on with the final event! After seven, yes, seven opening acts, six of which were local starter bands, all but Unexpect were amatuer outfits and had a big part of wearing down the audience to the point that when, Trail of Tears finally went on, and the minor upset to the Echoes of Eternity fans was over, the crowd had thinned to nearly a third of its populace.
Trail of Tears did an amazing job. I have been a huge supporter of theirs since I found out about the band. I actually missed their first album, "Profoundemonium" and learned about them when they released, "A New Dimension of Might" in 2002. Being a huge Tristania fan I was interested in any of the member's projects and had learned that Ronny Thorsen, one of the cheif contributors to, "World of Glass" had departed and started his own band, Trail of Tears. Well, with that association, his own project became a must find and was well worth hunting it down. He took with him the same awesome mentality of heavy rhythmic guitars and pounding drums and combined it with epic keyboard orchestrations and added the mixture of male vocals not only in harsh darkness but in surprisingly melodic sections as well that uplift the songs and add gothic melancholy where needed. To then add a special artistic flourish, that connects me and others to this type of music all the more, of lush female operatic vocals reinforcing Ronny, himself and adding epic power to the songs.
The mixture of voices adds character and story telling to the music and makes each piece quite drastically different in vocal qualities alone. The follow up album, "Free Fall into Fear" was just as powerful and cemented them into a favorite band.
Just recently they released, "Existentia". Their newest album maintained all the strengths from their previous work but definitely refining the skill and sound. I noticed the male clean vocals had a stronger presence on the first couple of songs and I liked it.
On their second album they had a bonus track which was a cover of Faith No More's, "Caffeine". It was sang so well, that now I hear a bit of Mike Patton in the clean vocalist's more mellow moments.
The vocal can just as quickly become a roaring monster in the next verse and rip your head off, but Ronny does it with much more finess and ability than your average, extreme vocalist and this is what makes all the difference for me.
If truth be told I am not all that into the growly, death style vocals and if it is just Cookie Monster on the mic I am out of there. Unfortunately, some of the opening bands were exactly that and a lot of the audience did take off.
For those who stuck around, they got to see that Ronny knows how to do it with power and lyrical coherence, in other words you can actually understand what the hell he is singing about, and makes it cool and serious.
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