Before Pleasure and pain these Italians had Lord Vampyr and Sonya Scarlet doing the singing for them, a double attack that managed to create a melodic yet creepy atmosphere; this time its different, Scarlet was placed front and center to take over all the responsibilities and even when this record is greatly performed by all the members of the band, Scarlet doesn’t sound quite ready to take on the lieder duties, not yet at least, she does have a great voice, and her personality in all their live shows always managed to get the best of the audience, but just for some brief moments on Pleasure and pain she forgets the flow in which the song is growing and delivers a weird combination of tempo that only she can understands. You have to bare in mind that maybe without her male counterpart there are some voids that need to be filled, so it’s not really her fault, is just that where there was something once, is no longer found, even with some great male back vocal guests like Flegias from Necrodeath, Dhiloz from Ancient, and members from Ensoph and Stormlord, the band sounds a little different and in the process of finding out exactly how they want to expose Scarlet’s vocal power.

The keyboards by Fabian like in every other Theatres des Vampires album are great, melodic, atmospheric, terrifying and beautiful at the same time; he’s just good at what he does. Scarlet’s voice is nice, but like I say she needs time to find out exactly how to expose all her talent; the guitar by Robert are tight are carry some of the most catchiest melodies ever recorded by the band.

Theatres des Vampires used to be a mix of black metal and gothic rock, now is just Goth rock, very well done by the way. If you have to describe their music one would say this could be sophisticated aristocratic vampire music, not like their previous darker and more “animalistic” albums. Check it out, because every melody of the album deserves a long cold listen.