In August 1994, I read a review of a mini-album titled \u201cSorrow\u201d by a Norwegian band with the strange name The 3rd and the Mortal in the German Heavy Metal magazine Heavy, oder was!? and it sounded very interesting. I was lucky to find a copy in a record store and immediately bought it. The first song started with very interesting percussion work, and after a long build-up, finally the angelic clean vocals of Kari Ruesl\u00e5tten set in, singing in Norwegian (a language I didn\u2019t understand back then), and it was love at first listen! Only a month later, I bought the full-length album \u201cTears Laid in Earth\u201d which I loved even more and which I still consider the best album of its kind, a style I\u2019d call atmospheric Doom Metal with heavenly female vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately already in 1995, Kari Ruesl\u00e5tten had left the band to start a solo career. While I also did enjoy her first two solo records (\u201cDemo Recordings 1995\u201d and the official debut album \u201cSpindelsinn\u201d) as well as the albums The 3rd and the Mortal released afterwards (with different vocalists), the latter going into a more experimental and also electronic direction, before they called it quits after their final album \u201cProject Bluebook\u201d about 10 years later, neither came close to the magic and atmosphere they had created together on \u201cSorrow\u201d and \u201cTears Laid in Earth\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I already did get to hear a few songs from \u201cTears Laid in Earth\u201d performed live by Kari Ruesl\u00e5tten, yet with different musicians, when she toured together with former The Gathering-vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen and former Theatre of Tragedy-vocalist Liv Kristine as The Sirens in 2014, it was still not the same as hearing the original. A review of The Sirens\u2019 concert at the Metal Female Voices Fest 2014 can be found here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n