Today (July 4th, 2015) marks the 20th Anniversary of Theatre Of Tragedy's self-titled debut, released through Massacre Records. The band - repsonsible for launching the career of Leaves' Eyes vocalist Liv Kristine - has been credited with pioneering the "beauty and the beast" sound that so many acts have adopted over the past two decades. Theatre Of Tragedy officially called it quits in October 2010.

It was announced in February 2012 that Theatre Of Tragedy were working on remastered re-issues of their first three albums: the self-titled debut, Velvet Darkness They Fear, and Aegis. Initially meant to be released in late 2012, July 5th was the official release date for all three albums in digipack CD and double vinyl LP formats.

The re-releases feature rare bonus material, new liner notes penned by BraveWords scribe Carl Begai including comments from the band members.An excerpt from the liner notes for the re-issued debut is available below:

The journey started with a simple demo tape, which received favourable reactions first in Theatre of Tragedy’s hometown of Stavanger, Norway and then from the international metal press. From there everything snowballed, and the rest is history.

“Most of us were so young and inexperienced at the time, so we didn’t really have the fear of being ridiculed, nor the ambitions to make it big,” says drummer Hein Frode Hansen. “We were just a bunch of kids wanting to make a hybrid of our different musical influences at the time. Individually, we were mediocre musicians at best, but together we were something fresh and new.”

“We all came from different backgrounds and that what made it so special,” continues guitarist Tommy Lindal. “We simply put some elements of all the members together and it sounded really cool; metal with piano and soprano vocals. My impression at the time was that we didn’t worry too much about if the people liked it or not, as long we enjoyed it ourselves.”

The debut album seemed to be a risky affair on many levels. The Theatre was more than a bit daring when one considers there was nothing heavy or metal about ‘…a Distance there is…’ , a track featuring piano, cello, Liv’s vocals, and the sound of falling rain. The song has since become the cornerstone of the debut for many diehard Theatre of Tragedy fans. Tommy remembers working on the track:

“…’a Distance there is…’ is a song that I think everybody in the band has a different relationship to. We were in Sweden at Dan Swanö´s studio, spending our Christmas alone in Sweden recording the debut. Lorentz and Liv had some ideas and ended up recording the song. The cello was Dan Swanö’s brilliant idea; he called a friend to drop by the studio and record some cello parts. It took some hours and the result was amazing. We were all was excited about it and decided to put it on the record.”

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