Track Listing

1. Crows Fly Back
2. Traitor
3. Ashes To The Stars
4. Messenger Of Gods
5. Before The Skies Come Down
6. Tides
7. Bleeding Dust
8. You
9. Howl
10. Grey
11. Veteran Of Psychic Wars
12. Tarot Media Player

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6840 in Music
• Released on: 2007-01-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Customer Reviews

Certainly some of the best metal I've heard in a long time....
Like quite a few people I expect, I heard about this band through Nightwish - their bassist and co-vocalist Marco Hietala is bassist and lead vocalist (along with vocals from Tommi Salmela) of this band. I love Marco's voice and so I decided to check out Tarot. I listened to some songs on their MySpace, and I was hooked. I liked the songs 'Crows Fly Black', 'Ashes To The Stars' and 'Tides' most, which are all from this album so I bought this, and now I want more! The album 'Suffer Our Pleasures' is top of my list now.
However, Tarot's music may not necesarily appeal to all Nightwish fans (though it probably will), they are both melodic heavy metal, but Tarot is much more growly and gritty.
Try the music yourself ---> www.myspace.com/theofficialtarot

1. Crows Fly Black - a varied track, fast and slow, loud and whispered, with some nice drumming and layered vocals towards the end.
2. Traitor - heavier than the title track, quite fast too, a nice angry energetic track, with some great vocals screaming 'Traitor!!'
3. Ashes To The Stars - one of my favourite songs on this album, heavy, but uplifting and an amazing chorus to sing to. Also has pretty cool video.
4. Messenger Of Gods - another amazing, angry, questioning chorus. Just turn it up loud and growl 'Messenger of gods! Where's the lightening, where's the thunder? Messenger of gods! Where's the word and where's the fire?'
5. Before The Skies Come Down - heavy with another great chorus (they seem to be rather good at those).
6. Tides - the softest and by far the most beautiful song on the album, another favourite, Marco sounds absolutely lovely, and some of my favourite lyrics from the album too.
7. Bleeding Dust - one of the grittiest songs, and you can hear it right from the very beginning.
8. You - a great head banger, but probably my least favourite. Still awesome though.
9. Howl! - a lovely guitar intro and, yes, yet another fantastic chorus, its sounds awesome thanks to Marco's fabulously smooth growling singing (yes, that combination of adjectives really is possibly). Probably my favourite heavier track here, great beat too for head banging.
10. Grey - one of the slowest and quietest songs (aside from Tides). The highlight of the song just has to be the tune of the word 'grey' sung several times in the chorus, it is gorgeous to me.
11.(bonus track) Veteran Of Psychic Wars - definately not an inferior just because it's a bonus track, this begins with some heavy drumming to get your head nodding, and slowly builds up some great layers with keyboards, guitar and vocals.

Overall, as I said in my title, this is a great metal album, probably set to become one of my favourites. All the instruments sound fantastic, but without a doubt, what makes this album so outstanding is definately the vocals, both Marco and Tommi sound unbelievable.
I highly recommend this to any metal or rock fan.

Tarot - Crows Fly Back
TAROT are a Finish metal band who released their debut album way back in 1986. However, since 2002, their name has been the subject of greater exposure as frontman Marco Hielta joined the Finish symphonic metal giants NIGHTWISH. In NIGHTWISH he provides the male lead vocals and also plays bass. (Yes, he's that guy with the wacky facial hair!)



TAROT's style is very much classic 80's JUDAS PRIEST style heavy metal but with a twist as the atmosphere of the record is very dark due to the heavy use of low keyboard sounds. As proven by his NIGHTWISH live performances (during Tarja's mid show rest), Marco Hielta boasts a decent vocal range to handle this sort of material without a problem. His brother Zachary also does a decent job on guitar with some excellent solos on the album as well as portraying a healthy range of powerful riffs.



The songs on the album are all competent enough but the problem for me is that while the album is solid overall, not enough tracks are good enough to blow your head off and none have choruses that leave an imprint in your memory. The opener, and title track `Crows Fly Back' kicks things off really well, but it's only until the seventh track `Bleeding Dust' until that level of quality is reached again. In the middle of those two is the album's odd-ball track `Tides', a lengthy melancholic ballad and a reasonable one at that.



If you're a big fan of Hielta's vocals in NIGHTWISH then you should enjoy this record. This is a good solid metal album and won't disappoint, but it's nothing new and it's very unlikely to set anyone's world alight anytime soon.