| // Album background | ||
| While ´Splendor Solis´ covered
the classic rock style, ´The Edges Of Twilight´ incorporated
the sounds of the world, with Eastern and African instruments, and the
band scraped at the electronic frontier with ´Transmission´,
´Triptych´ is a combination of all of their albums. The record
ranges from ballad-like songs such as ´Gone´and ´Taking
Me Away´, to Eastern songs like ´Samsara´ and ´The
Halcyon Days´ and to the harder sounds in songs like ´Touch´
or ´A Great Big Lie´. With the chiming and melodic ´Heaven Coming Down´ the band finally had a number one song in Canada and it also became one of the most played songs on the Canadian rock radio. Most of the old time Tea Party fans found that whole record but especially ´Heaven Coming Down´ was too „poppy“. They accused the band of a lack of depth and of being too mainstream. Martin didn’t consider the added pop elements to be something bad and argued that the reason for the lighter sound was the fact that he was a lot happier. Before the release of the album the band had hidden five tracks on their website for their fans to listen to so that they could vote for the one they would like to see as the first single release. ´Touch´, ´Chimera´, ´Underground´ and ´The Messenger´ finally had to surrender to ´Heaven Coming Down´. While ´Transmission´ had been released in the German market without anybody noticing, Triptych faired better after the music store chain WOM named ´Triptych´ the „Album of the Month“ and imported huge quantities directly from Canada. This caused EMI to release the album earlier and also put the band on the billing for the 13th Bizarre festival. In January 2000 The Tea Party returned for a tour with Queensryche. |
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