Last time out with BW&BK;, in November 2008, Theatre Of Tragedy drummer and co-founder Hein Frode Hansen commented on the band’s forthcoming album, claiming they had “gone back to the way we used to write music, which we haven’t done since Velvet Darkness They Fear.” Big talk considering how much the band has changed since the 1996 breakthrough album, having ditched their trademark growling vocals, toying with electronica for two albums, and firing the perceived voice and face of the band, Liv Kristine, in 2003. Cards stacked against Theatre, nobody who got off on the band’s pioneering ‘90s doom goth sound entertained illusions of what new outing Forever Is The World would sound like. Until the first audio samples began to circulate online.

Unlike the perceived “comeback” album from 2006, Storm, which introduced new vocalist Nell Sigland and a return to the goth realm, Forever Is The World manages to wipe from memory Theatre Of Tragedy’s lean years for those that wish it gone. A bridge between Velvet Darkness and its follow-up, Aegis (1998), the new album is a welcome shock to the system for any old school fan that may have felt it would be better if the Theatre called it a day.

“I think we did that to a lot of people,” says Hansen. “I think they’re going to be really surprised when they hear the new record. And the thing about it is, it was never really planned that it was going to come out this way. It wasn’t some kind of elaborate scheme to lure the older fans back into buying our records, we didn’t think ‘Let’s do an old school record so that everyone will like us again…’ (laughs). When we were doing Storm we figured we were going to make a modern version of what we would have considered the follow-up to Aegis. We never sat down and said this one was going to be the record that’s missing between Velvet Darkness and Aegis, but as you said it does kind of sound like that. At the same time, though, it doesn’t really compare to that period.”
“I think this was the first record where everyone in the band was in the studio at the same time at the end of the recordings,” Hansen continues. “We went through all the songs giving our honest opinions about which songs sucked, which ones were good, where we needed new parts like more vocals or more piano or drums. We went right to the bowels of the songs, and in the end I think we turned out a much more worthwhile album. I’m really happy about that.”

The new album’s biggest surprise is no longer a secret thanks to the internet; male vocalist and founder Raymond Rohonyi growls his way through a couple songs. Up to this point Rohonyi had been adamant against putting growls to Theater of Tragedy’s music – a stand that began with the Aegis album – preferring to use his clean voice or spoken word. His bandmates, like the fans, hinted for years that a return to original form might be nice. That he actually did it left everyone in the band speechless according to Hansen.

“That was just surreal. I can’t even explain the shock on our faces when we heard it. Raymond wasn’t too involved in the songwriting process for this record because he’s been really busy with a lot of stuff in his own life. So, a week before we were due to go into the studio we had a photo session and we talked about the fact that it was the last week we had to really add stuff to the record. If anything had to be done, it had to be done within that week. Raymond had some work to do because there were three or four songs that needed vocals, and we told him that if he couldn’t we needed to find somebody else. He told us he’s take a couple days off from work and take care of it. So, he was using the band’s portable studio, and he sent us the files with the three songs he’d done and there were the growls again. It was like, ‘What the fuck happened here?’ (laughs).”
“Raymond is not an easy man to persuade if he’s got him mind set on something,” Hansen says. “We’d talked to him over the years about putting growls here or there and he always told us, ‘Never, ever again!’ He did the growls for this album and we were completely in shock. I asked him why on earth he decided to do it and he said – with irony in his voice, believe me – that a former member of the band had insinuated that Theatre Of Tragedy was going a bit soft in our old age. So basically this record is a big ‘Up yours.’”

Nothing about Rohonyi’s performance in contrived and the man is far from stupid. He gives everyone a taste of the past while putting equal emphasis on his clean voice. The growls aren’t there to simply shut people up, either. Case in point with lead track ‘Hide And Seek’, which begins with his Velvet Darkness grunt. Clean vocals simply wouldn’t have nearly the same impact, which is considerable as is. Hansen agrees.

“The thing is, it really fits the song. That’s the main thing. It’s the way it always should have been. When we listened to the demos without those vocals ‘Hide And Seek’ was not a complete song. Raymond’s vocals added to the atmosphere and it immediately became something that is reminiscent of our older stuff. Like the song ‘Hollow’ on the new record, it sounds like it could easily be included on Velvet Darkness.”

At what point was it clear Forever Is The World was taking this major step back?

“It was clear to us from the beginning, probably since about last summer. We’d had a meeting about what we were going to do on the next record, how we were going to do it, and we established this rule that we weren’t going to have any rules. We didn’t want to scrap certain ideas because they sounded too old fashioned or too much like something we’d done before. We had some leftover tracks from Storm at that point, plus there was old demo stuff that we found that we really had to do something with.”
“The new songs sound like they’re going back to the old Theatre Of Tragedy style, but a lot of these songs were actually written before Storm, almost immediately after Assembly. I don’t know; when we recorded this album it sounded a lot slower and – I don’t want to say doomy in that sense – more atmospheric like the old days. Without actually having any rules we incorporated a lot of stuff from the different styles we’ve had. We didn’t spend hours and hours discussing what kind of style the record needed to have. This is a record and not a Hit Parade, it goes where it has to go. And I think that’s mostly by accident (laughs).”

The album includes a nod to the band’s electronica past in ‘Astray’, an odd tune that could well have appeared on Musique yet is also reminiscent of Aegis. A so-called “accident” gone right?

“That song is pretty much the weirdest thing we’ve ever done. We have a friend who is a diehard Theatre fan who has been with us since the early days, and he told us that’s most brilliant song we’ve done in ages. He wondered how the hell we’d kept it a secret, figuring it was from an old demo, but it was actually one of those last minute things. ‘Astray’ was supposed to be the bonus track on the digi-pack but when we heard the final version it just fit perfectly where it is. It’s like a fresh kind of sound in the middle of all this other stuff.”

Ultimately, the make-or-break element on Forever Is The World is Sigland. The spectre of Liv Kristine that was lurking about during Storm’s run – at least where the fans were concerned – is gone. The new album sounds like Theatre Of Tragedy rather than an effort to try and convince people of Sigland’s rightful place in the band.

“Nell was very, very involved in the songwriting for this record,” Hansen reveals. “Arrangements, songwriting, vocal lines. A big reason why the album is the way it, to be honest, is her. She did a remarkable job working with the songs. She did some piano stuff and she came up with almost complete song ideas. The guys in the band, we’ve never had a singer come to us with a complete arrangement before, but Nell composed a lot of stuff on this record. I think it’s thanks to her that we were able to pull all the strings together for this, because she was involved in everything.”
“We never actually talked about that,” he adds “Nell told us ‘I need male vocals here and here, there are no female vocals there..,’ so she was pretty clear on what she wanted. I thought that was great. At the same time she was also very cooperative and able to say ‘How can we do this differently?’ She was somebody who was very interested in making something.”

It’s worth noting that for all the talk of Rohonyi’s vocals and Sigland’s contributions, he only appears on half the album, leaving Sigland to carry the rest of the songs on her own. Even as a co-founding member of the band, it still puts Rohonyi’s future in some doubt.

“He is still a member of the band,” Hansen insists. “Raymond will do shows with us and everything like that, but he just didn’t have a lot of inspiration to do this record. He’s grown apart from the whole metal scene. We started this band almost 16 years ago, and people change. They move in different directions and that’s what happened with Raymond. I really don’t know if he appreciates this record as much as me and Lorentz (Aspen / keyboards) do, but at the same time, even though Raymond doesn’t seem to be as committed to the music as he was 10 years ago there’s a bond between us. We’ve been through think and thin, many a crisis and many a disaster during our career together. You can’t just shove that in a corner and ignore it.”
“I think for me and Lorentz, we can be really proud of this record. For us to be able to sit back and say that it sounds like a Theatre Or Tragedy record, that it sounds like us, is a great feeling. This atmospheric and melancholic music is in our blood. It just came together and I’m really happy about that.”
“It doesn’t really matter if you don’t like everything Theatre Of Tragedy has done,” he adds, “because Theatre has lived its own life. It has its own identity.”