Theatre of Tragedy is a Norwegian band from Stavanger, originally assembled in 1993 and best known for their earlier albums, which provided a great deal of influence to the gothic metal genre. The band made use of contrasting vocals - male bass vocals (making rare use of death grunts) and female soprano singing - and on their first three albums, presented lyrics written predominantly in Old English. Starting from the album Musique, however, Theatre of Tragedy made drastic changes to its style, which became significantly inspired by the industrial rock genre, abandoning Old English writing and death grunts in the process.
Theatre of Tragedy begun when drummer Hein Frode Hansen quit his former band Phobia in 1993 and started looking for a new musical project to play in. A friend of his, who worked on a record store, told Frode that a band called Suffering Grief was looking for a new drummer, and after entering in contact with them, he joined the band. At the time, Suffering Grief was composed of vocalist Raymond István, keyboard player Lorentz Aspen and guitarist Tommy Lindahl. No bassist had joined the band yet, but "Eirik" had agreed to play with them in live concerts.
After finding a rehearsal place, the band decided to work upon a couple of piano arrangements composed by Lorentz. The vocals, at the time, were mostly entirely composed by raw death grunts.
After composing their first song, "Lament of the Perishing Roses", the band changed its name to Le Reine Noir and then to Theatre of Tragedy. They subsequently invited singer Liv Kristine to do female vocals for one song, but quickly invited her to join the band permanently, after seeing that the vocal combination with István had seemingly worked well.
In 1994, their first studio demo was recorded, and in 1995, the debut album Theatre of Tragedy was released. Arguably, the band reached the apogee of its career in 1998, with the release of the critically acclaimed album Aégis.
