The key (for me personally) to a good start in writing a successful CD review is to write down what literally comes to mind immediately when listening. Obviously not a hard concept on the surface. I happen to take this principle to extremes and make my little social commentaries because that’s exactly what pours out, especially when the music is bland and boring. Instead of writing boring words describing a boring album, I decide to entertain myself in hopes of some redemption from having wasted time listening to a retarded "metal" album. I was born for greater things. Each of these generic albums is a reminder that I’m apparently in the wrong place… or am I? I still like metal and I’ve always enjoyed being part of it. I do this mostly for fun and never considered myself some type of huge authority, but while I’m at this I scrape up some standards… hence why I now say that bands like Tristania are probably the ones in the wrong place, and it becomes necessary to drift into social commentaries. This is another one of those extreme cases… I don’t give a fuck if something is not heavy metal music, I listen to all kinds of shit. This album just happens to be some more really dumb music that has invaded the heavy metal underground and is being passed off as part of it. It’s times like these that again open up my eyes to the world and make me realize how unnervingly vast it can be sometimes. At what point did some fuckwit discover he or she could make some money selling "music" like this? Who does this appeal to? Who likes this? Stand up, please, so I can look at you and learn more about the world around me, because within the first few chords I can tell this is going to hurt. Impressive operatic female vox and then a stupid scream open this album up with title track "Beyond The Veil". The drum triggers are the largest problem, courtesy of Terje Refsnes who recorded most of Napalm’s recent releases with the same generic productions. A lot of dumbass keys follow and happily retain their presence, and later on in the album some violins show up. A strong death metal voice totally goes to waste, some "gothic male" vocals (I forgot what song and I tried to go back and find them for your displeasure but couldn’t stomach it after a couple random songs) - whoever that is, please shoot yourself, you’d feel better in the morning - and also a poor excuse for black metal type screeching that deserves a kick to the face works itself in this special medley of emotionally agitating gothic metal romance. Just like Napalm’s other gothic metal bands, Tristania obviously can play, they just can’t write music. They capitalize on the notion that such talent can be appealing and therefore change ideas every few moments in any given song, except apparently they’re happiest when it comes out totally unrelated. This sounds like it was written by a bunch of Guitar Center fanatics and has about as much depth as the people who work there (track 2, "Aphelion", is a perfect example). Let’s quickly take a moment and thank Tristania and all others who further inspire the following premise: IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE LEAST BIT INTERESTED IN HATING AND KILLING PEOPLE, DO NOT ASSOCIATE YOURSELF WITH HEAVY METAL. Shallow music for shallow people… buy this if you have an short emotional attention span. Written By: Abbas