Review by Rick Eaglestone for MPM
Seven years on from In the Raw, the longest gap between metal albums in her solo catalogue, the Finnish soprano Tarja has returned to where she belongs, Frisson Noir makes an emphatic case that the extended absence only sharpened the intent.
The album opens with forty-five seconds of orchestral anticipation, strings building across a single sustained tension, the Budapest ensemble deployed not as decoration but as a slow-burning ignition sequence. When Frisson Noir arrives, it does so with a directness that the intro has fully earned. The title track is Tarja operating at a remove from comfort: the vocal lines are forceful where her earlier solo material was often accommodating, and the guitar work beneath her has a coarseness that the album’s orchestral production never smooths away. The darkness promised in the title is established immediately, and it holds.
A tighter, more immediate construction than its predecessor, The Eternal Return demonstrates what Avron brings to the project in terms of proportion. The arrangement is dense, but nothing crowds the vocal, and Tarja’s phrasing especially across the chorus, shows the kind of precision that two decades of performing across opera houses, festival stages, and arenas will build in a singer who pays close attention to what those environments teach.
Leap of Faith is the collaboration that the record’s announcement made unavoidable to anticipate, and the track delivers on every expectation. Hietala former Nightwish bassist and co-vocalist, whose second solo album Roses from the Deep paired the two on ‘Left on Mars’ is given equal weight in the arrangement here rather than the subordinate position the standard guest-feature dynamic usually assigns. His baritone anchors the low end of the emotional register whilst her soprano expands above it.
At Sea is the album’s most complete statement: the Budapest Art Orchestra and Budapest Art Choir are given the room their contribution deserves, the orchestral and choral lines interlocking with the heavier instrumental passages in a way that feels like composition rather than juxtaposition. Violin from Mervi Myllyoja and grand concert piano from Niklas Pokki shift the track’s texture across its length without interrupting its momentum. This is symphonic metal treated as a serious compositional form, and it is the track that most fully demonstrates what separates Frisson Noir from the genre’s more calculated entries.
Where At Sea spreads outward, Blaze Forever pulls inward. Six and a half minutes of sustained aggression with the orchestral elements pushed to the edges rather than the centre, the guitar takes primary responsibility for the album’s weight here, and the result is the track most likely to satisfy listeners who needed the heaviness claim in the press materials to be literal rather than relative. It is not subtle, and it is not meant to be.
The Trace Outlives is the album’s most textually distinctive collaboration. Komada is a shamisen player versed in both the Tsugaru and Nagauta styles, and her contribution does not sit underneath the arrangement or provide atmospheric colouring, it is present as a structural element, the instrument’s timbre sharpening against the metal backdrop in a way that creates genuine friction rather than easy exoticism. This is the album’s most unexpected track and one of its most rewarding: the kind of pairing that only makes sense once you hear it and then seems inevitable.
Apocalyptica formed at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy in 1993 and released their debut Plays Metallica by Four Cellos in 1996; in the three decades since, they have navigated more genre intersections than most bands attempt in a career. The pairing with Tarja is among the most natural they have undertaken. Tango earns its title: the rhythmic structure has a push-and-pull at its centre that the name accurately captures, and the cellos provide a low-frequency counterpoint to the vocal that no conventional rock arrangement would have found, it is the album’s most concentrated piece, and that concentration suits it.
Anemoia: the nostalgia for a time you never lived. The track earns its title’s psychological complexity and carries the emotional register of recollection without specifying what is being recalled, and that studied ambiguity gives it a reach that more literal treatments of the same theme would foreclose. Bedmar and Freitas’s contributions move the arrangement through changes of register and texture that prevent the sustained atmosphere from settling into inertia.
Dani Filth’s contribution serves a statement of tonal contrast, and the track delivers that contrast without allowing it to become novelty. Filth’s vocal approach has become one of the genre’s most immediately recognisable textures which sits against Tarja’s operatic phrasing in a way that neither softens nor alienates either voice. I Don’t Care is the album’s most confrontational piece, and the production gives both performers the space to operate at their own register without mediation. The refusal to smooth the edges between them is the right choice.
The album’s closing collaboration pairs Tarja with the RHCP drummer Chad Smith and the pairing is more cohesive than a surface-level genre comparison might suggest. Smith is not here to deliver a cameo, his drumming on Against the Odds functions as a structural foundation for six and a half minutes of sustained intensity, giving the arrangement the rhythmic authority it needs to hold its length without collapsing into repetition. The track closes the album’s main sequence with the same commitment that opened it, and the Outro that follows, provides the breath that a record of this density fully requires.
The guest list reads, on paper, like a curatorial exercise in credibility-by-association. In practice, each collaboration is structurally integrated rather than cosmetically applied, and Avron’s mixing ensures that no single feature overwhelms the record’s identity. It remains, in every track, a Tarja album. The guests are evidence of what she can create in proximity to others; the core sound is entirely her own.
Seven years is a long time between metal records, long enough for a career to drift permanently toward the more commercially accommodating register that orchestral and pop production represents. That Tarja has returned not merely to the metal context but to the most demanding version of it — and delivered an album that fully sustains its claim to being her heaviest — is the record’s most significant achievement. Frisson Noir is the document of a singer who knew precisely what she needed to do and went and did it. The dark shiver arrives exactly as promised.
Frisson Noir Track listing:
01. Intro
02. Frisson Noir
03. The Eternal Return
04. Leap of Faith (feat. Marko Hietala)
05. At Sea (feat. Mervi Myllyoja & Niklas Pokki)
06. Blaze Forever
07. The Trace Outlives (feat. Sayo Komada)
08. Tango (feat. Apocalyptica)
09. Anemoia (feat. Julián Bedmar & Valter Freitas)
10. I Don’t Care (feat. Dani Filth)
11. Against the Odds (feat. Chad Smith)
12. Outro
Line-up:
Tarja Turunen – Lead Vocals, Piano, Production
Alex Menichini – Drums
Julian Barrett – Guitar
Pit Barrett – Bass
Niklas Pokki – Grand Concert Piano
Mervi Myllyoja – Violin
Website: www.tarjaturunen.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/tarja
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tarjaofficial
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TarjaOfficial
8/10
