ALBUM REVIEW: Frisson Noir – Tarja
There’s a reason frisson, a physical tingling sensation, is sometimes referred to as a ‘skin orgasm’. It’s a release of intense pleasure, often felt in anticipation or at the swell of an emotional piece of music. When Gandalf and co set off from Rivendell accompanied by HOWARD SHORE’s iconic motif? That’s frisson. It’s unlikely anyone is immune from it. Just show them TARJA taking an arena to church with The Phantom Of The Opera on NIGHTWISH’s End Of An Era. Her final note, held for an unbelievable amount of time, is up there with the angels. It’s a free injection of frisson straight up your spine into your scalp.
On her first metal album in seven years, Frisson Noir, TARJA attempts to induce it over and over with mixed results. The record is billed as a homecoming to the genre in which she belongs (relegating her classical output to a kind of side hustle) and as her heaviest album yet. Therein lies its occasional missteps: sometimes less is more, and when everything is firing on all cylinders like on The Trace Outlives, intricacies are lost among the everything louder than everything else production. The song is one of the better compositions here structurally and the chorus really lets TARJA’s power and ear for melody come to the fore, but its volume is a little claustrophobic.
‘Almost, but not quite’ is a recurring theme. I Don’t Care is a true duet with CRADLE OF FILTH frontman Dani Filth; he doesn’t just pop up for a guest verse, he’s with TARJA every step of the way. His distinctive howl and machine gun verbiage fits right in with CRADLE’s dramatic extreme metal, but he’s no crooner, and pairing him with a world-class talent is cruel. Thanks to the sinister instrumentation and the goth vibe, the song itself is one of the record’s best. Among more familiar beats, it has its own identity. But the duet is not a success.
So Frisson Noir is best when it gets out of its own way. It opens and closes with the sound of meditation bells. Heard alone and given the space to ring out, their delicacy musters up some tingles. When TARJA sings ‘close your eyes, come with me’ on the title track, the scale of her voice over drums that evoke the rush of a new adventure induces frisson too. Likewise on The Eternal Return, on which TARJA’s virtuoso melisma takes the place of a guitar solo. Every other element steps back and lets her do her thing, and her thing is unrivalled in metal.
Blaze Together gets the balance just right. Everything is in service of TARJA while reaffirming her genre credentials with some chunky metallic riffing. As is the way, there’s a ‘but’: the song features a backward monologue, adding little and drawing the track out unnecessarily. That aside, this is Frisson Noir at its most direct and effective. The latter half of the ten-minute At Sea recalls the majesty of MUSE’s Butterflies And Hurricanes; the song takes a bit to get going, but it’s another high point once it does.
This return to rock from TARJA is welcome, but in trying to make up for lost time, there’s some overkill. Some songs are too long, some have too much going on. But when the record hits, it’s a reminder of how TARJA really exists in a category of one. She’s an undeniable talent who has put the work in to stay ahead of the entire scene vocally. Frisson Noir isn’t a showstopper, but TARJA has earned A-list status time and again, and there’s more than enough here to keep her top of the marquee.
Rating: 7/10
Frission Noir is out now via earMusic.
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