TYRANNY OF BEAUTY

After the extravaganza of the previous year's concept album "Turn Of The Tides",TD wanted to make a simpler,more stripped down album and so 1995's "Tyranny Of Beauty" is a very different affair. Unfortunately,they went too far in the opposite direction. By trying to do something different than the lush,overproduced "Turn Of The Tides", they wound up sounding like a garage band in comparison on "Tyranny Of Beauty". The "production" on this album is truly terrible,everything sounds like it's recorded on maximum volume all the time,creating an impenetrable porridge of sound where it's almost impossible to differentiate the separate instruments in the mix. Not that there's that much musical information of any value to be found on this album in any case since they intentionally kept it as simple as possible this time round. Zlatco Perica,the guitarist who had augmented the TD sound in the early 90's was now replaced by not one guitarist,but two. And what a difference that made! Perico's very clear,precise,almost laserlike playing had now been replaced by a very different guitarsound indeed. A sloppy,messy one which occasionally makes TD sound like a grungeband,a development definitely not welcomed. At least not by me! Even Edgar Froese's guitar playing sounds like a hideous mess,a mixing accident more than anything else. And it's a real shame since the tracks themselves could have been very good,given another production and other arrangements as they proved later the same year when they re-arranged some of them for the first "Dream Mixes" project. Ironically,the only outstanding track here is an oldie: The updated version of "Stratosfear","Stratosfear 1995". Many old fans hated this version of their beloved 70's classic,but I thought it was excellent and it still stands as the only really good song on this album. Little did I know at the time that digging into the past would become a whole new avenue of creativity for TD and lead to numerous remixings and re- recordings of previous TD classics,resulting so far in 4 remix albums and several other tracks found on compilations and livealbums. TD also flirt tentatively with techno and dance rythms on "Tyranny Of Beauty" and what I thought of as another temporary diversion into new musical waters in the typical TD fashion before they would move on to something else,instead turned out to form the foundation for most of what they have done the last 10 years. The techno/dance thing was not a momentary infatuation for TD but turned out to have more staying power as an inspiration for future TD albums than anything else in their long career,leading to the great albums they have done over the last decade,like "Goblin's Club", "Transsiberia", "Great Wall Of China", "Mota Atma" and of course all the "Dream Mixes" albums. Not being endowed with the ability to foresee the future however,at the release of "Tyranny Of Beauty" in 95 I had no idea that all that wonderful music would have such humble origins as this rather forgettable album.