Theatre of Tragedy — closure:live

This live album might not be what some of you expected after ToT's latest release "Musique" which received quite varied reactions. There are NO "Musique" songs on this album. Some might be happy about this and some might dislike it but it's only a collection of songs from the pre-Musique area recorded live during the Metal Mania Festival in Katowice, Poland in April 2000.

It features one song from the self-title debut album, three songs from "Velvet Darkness They Fear", one song from the "rose for the dead" mini-album and five songs from Aégis.

Before some of you are guessing that ToT might go back to their roots again on the next studio album, let me tell you that this will NOT be the case! This live album was released by their former label Massacre Records and the only reason that there are no Musique songs on it is that they simply don't have the rights to release these songs. But still Massacre hopes to make some more bucks with the name Theatre of Tragedy and so they have released this live album.

This doesn't mean that the album isn't good. Not at all. The sound quality is really great and the selection of songs is also very good. All the greatest hits are on it. There are even two live video tracks from "Cassandra" and "Der Tanz der Schatten" in MPEG-format on the CD-ROM part of the disc.

The only song that reminds me a bit of the new Musique-area is the remixed version of "Black as the devil painteth" which is played in a new, more electronical style.
Personally I really like that version.

So, all in all I can really recommend this album to old and new ToT fans.
It comes in a very cool digibook version which looks, guess what, like a book.

"Closure:live" certainly is some kind of "closure" to the past as there will probably never be another album with only the old songs on it again.