With "Forever Will Be Gone", the band apparently conclude a trilogy of albums that began with "All The Beauty" and "I Have Lost". A quick glance at the song titles reveals that, when read without pause, they too form a phrase. If nothing else, Mortal Love certainly go about their task with consistency, which unfortunately only serves to bring into sharper focus the fact that the album fails to meet its lofty aspirations.

Musically, the album comes across as a sort of sequel to Theatre Of Tragedy's "Aegis", with female vocalist Catherine Nyland soaring above it all. Nyland has quite a nice voice. Her approach is less wispy than that of Liv Kristine, but no less effective. As for the vocals of "Lev" (Hans Olav Kjeljebakken), I'll come to him in a moment.

The production on the album is very clean, allowing everything room to breathe, but also lending a very dry, electronic feel to the drums which proves to be distracting. The guitars too seem to suffer a bit from the production, being too clean to provide any real bite when the band decide to up the intensity. Conversely, the loops and synths benefit from this. Give and take I suppose.

Which brings us to the male vocals. Hans Olav Kjeljebakken (Lev) has a good singing voice. Very good in fact. He employs it often and mostly to good effect throughout the album. When he and Nyland launched into the chorus of "I Make The Mistake" during my first listen, I was entirely prepared to promote the track to the top of my Ipod playlist. A short time later, I was rethinking my decision. At about the 3:25 point into the song, Lev proceeds to let loose with a wholly unconvincing scream. To make matters worse, the scream is bathed in a kind of panning phase effect that does nothing to add to its potency. For the remainder of the album, Lev periodically offers up a collection of whispers, croaks and screams that nearly always sound out of place. It is this aspect of the album more than anything else that brings the score down from what should have been higher. Reactionary? Perhaps, but it doesn't change the fact that many times I found myself drawn completely out of a song because of this. While I do not doubt that some people will enjoy these, I must say that I am not one of them.

With "Forever Will Be Gone" Mortal Love have an above average but typical slab of gothic metal. The song structures are repetitive and the lyrical themes are tired, but if you enjoy the usual staples of the genre, you will find something to enjoy despite the vocal histrionics.

written by Kristoffer Monfort

Playing time: 40.18