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Abney Park
The Death of Tragedy

Posted: Friday, November 03, 2006
By: Dj Infam0us
Network technician

Seattle's Abney Park bring us their third album, The Death of Tragedy, mixing the best of tribal, dark wave dance, and steam punk with a very genuine Renaissance feel. The album opens up with "Stigmata Martyr," which sets the tone for the entire album with its mid-paced heavy beats, electronic and industrial tones, and underpinnings of spiritualistic lyrics. The album from the open is much like the Renaissance running headlong into the dark ages and emerging from the heart and soul of a darkwave tribal dance club. This is best demonstrated by the song "The Wrong Side" and its descriptions of party districts filled with underground nights and Goth kids sporting glowsticks and fishnets. The lyrics are wrapped in an up-tempo dance beat wrapped in violin snyths, Cathedralesque choruses, and just enough rhythm guitar to make it a well rounded, danceable, yet non-popish tune. The album then does a complete 180-degree turn and the next track turns to "Dear Ophelia," which is based on a Shakespearian play. The song opens with an Australian Didgeridoo and dives straight into a slow throbbing dance beat with heavy guitars. From there, the album goes into a series of very tribal sounding dance tracks with combinations of entrancing lyrics, bongo drums, industrial sampling, voice-overs, electronica melodies, and of course classical instruments such as the violin. The album runs the gamut from "All the Myths are True," which tells the tale of how science ends up proving the legends and lore of old to be true and how it comes back to haunt man kind in a track that will tickle your intellect with hints of sci-fi fantasy, to "Downtrodden," which spills out the utter helplessness and futility of one man's life who has realized that he’s sick of life and afraid to pass on to the next world. The album presents diversity in sound, depth in its lyrics, and quality in the production work. Abney Park's first few albums did show promise (From Dreams or Angels and Taxidermy), but this album hands down puts the rest of their work to shame.