01. Welcome To Macabria 

02. A Macabre Banquet
03. Lady In Black  

04. Angel Of Lust
05. Luciferia - 

06. Incubo # 1
07. Macabria 

08. The Jester's Shadow
09. The Golden Sin - 

10. Carnival Day
10. Incubo # 2 

11. The Curse Of Headless Christ
12. Mourning Day  

13. The Undertaker & The Crow
14. The Beginning Of The End

Bonus track:
15. La Danse Macabria Du Vampire

Alexander: Vocals
Scarlet: Female vocals
Fabian: Keyboards
Robert: Guitars
Simon: Bass
Gabriel: Drums

review  by Elisabeth "elli" Kellner____ 

After their 2002 album “Suicide Vampire” which was much criticized for its lyrics, Theatres des Vampires promised a major change with their new album. Away from the Black Metal roots to Symphonic Gothic Horror, following the traditions of film director Tim Burton and his classic “Nightmare before Christmas”.

Well, I have to admit after listening to the new album “Nightbreed of Macabria” for several times I still can’t help the thought that this band isn’t so unique after all, they seem to have jumped the Cradle of Filth bandwagon a few years ago and never left it since then.

The opener “Welcome to Macabria” is still promising, string arrangements in a kind of Venetian style, the lyrics spoken instead of sung. But already the second song falls back into genre clichés – whispering voices, high female vocals and in contrast deep growling male ones. The musical patterns are simple – double bass drumming, keyboards, 3 different chords on the guitars. The promised symphonic gothic isn’t recognizable yet. And it doesn’t come through within the next few songs. Some of the keyboard lines sound like taken from themes from the soundtracks of “The Addams Family” or “The Monsters”. All the material used is highly repetitive, with every song you get the feeling that you heard this all before, the resemblances with Cradle of Filth are not deniable, though Theatres des Vampires go more into the Gothic than into the Black Metal direction.

From track 8 “The Jesters Shadow” the album finally takes of into the symphonic direction though the use of the violins in this track seems to be misplaced and one still wonders where all the other strings from the opening track have gone. Too heavily does the band rely on their keyboards where real strings would have made a real difference. And after a very promising, more rocking “The Golden Sin” another fall-back into the female-male, high-deep contrast of which the album is loaded, almost overloaded.

The lovely strings from the beginning come back a second and last time in the two last songs“The Undertaker and the Crow”, a song that is carried by the female voices and the acoustic guitars in it’s middle part and “The End of the Beginning”, a very lively song with folk influences in the beginning that make the listener almost start to jump – a nice change from the otherwise typical slow gothic rhythms. This song however, would have made a suitable ending to this album, but for some reason someone had the idea to put a remix of the 2002 “Danse Du Macabre” at the end. Oh my goodness…this is so cheap….well, the song wasn’t that good to start with (especially the lyrics “we fuck your soul out” to mention just one example) and now someone put it on the simplest techno beats available on a keyboard – Scooter meats Gothic Metal. It just hurts. And ruins even the impression of a not so special album. 

Apart from the last song fans of the gothic metal genre may like that album, it is not a new milestone in the history of gothic and the production side has some flaws. For all those who just want to get started in Gothic Metal there are definitely better bands to start with.

Rating: 6.2/10

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