The Victim's Shudder - Terror Romance

Artist:                The Victim’s Shudder

Album:              Terror Romance

Year:                 2008

Line-up:            ???

Label:                Paradigms Recordings

Beautiful and haunting. Terror Romance is an album one may find oneself enveloped by, swept by feelings of both awe and unease. These mostly ambient tracks have been impressively crafted to take the listener to places beautiful and serene, or horrifying and oppressive, or both at the same time. It is this blend of atmospheres that makes Terror Romance a noteworthy piece in the sometimes stale field of ambient music.

It may be that the music presented here is not strictly just ambient, since many parts of the album do contain melodies of a kind, but they are haunting in the background, blended into the ghostly female vocals or the more clearly ambient soundscape some tracks present. Sometimes the music takes more dramatic turns into droning, uglier sounds or muffled echoing cries, but it mostly keeps its harrowing atmosphere very subtle.

The quiet and subdued nature of the music is perhaps the first thing the listener hears in the album, and it may very easily become just ambient background noise, but I believe the album is meant to be listened to more closely and intensely. That is when the ghosts of Terror Romance can be heard. 

But it is not music to be listened to all the time, and a listener may find the album repetitive at times. When the mood is right, however, this album can be a very powerful experience.

Here is a track on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STCkdFTj-QY

Written by Those Who Know.