The band's members expressed a fascination with vampires and anything connected to them, earning themselves and their music the title "vampiric metal" from their contemporaries. The band created a coherent image of vampirism in their stage performance and within the lyrical themes and atmospheres of their music, which contributed heavily to the gaining of their fan-base.
During their career, the band was first primarily influenced by symphonic black metal, but later tended to include differing influences, including: classicalmusic, opera, darkwave, deathrock, gothic rock and several electro-industrial sub-genres. Throughout this stylistic deviation, a few characteristics of the band's music have remained consistent; melancholic atmospheres and lyrics, vocal styles of akin to gothic metal, and their vampiric image.
The band has produced ten albums in ten years with the English label Plastic Head, and has gained more recognition within the metal scene in Europe, South America and Russia, partially due to the band's participation in various festivals around the world. These include: Vampyria III in London in 1999, Gods of Metal in Italy in 2000, Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig in 2003 and in 2006, Gotham in London in 2004, Female Voices Festival in Wieze, Belgium in 2006.
In 2003, the band toured with Christian Death throughout Europe, and recorded an album with Valor of Christian Death and Gian Pyres of Cradle of Filth as special guests.
The band's shows have always seen a reasonable level of attendance, and have become more dramatic over the band's career, incorporating fireworks and "out of line" appearances by Scarlet.
Since 2004, Sonya Scarlet has remained the solo vocalist and front of the band, replacing her previous role as backing vocals.
Scarlet sometimes cuts herself with razors at performances, freely letting fans drink her blood, promising them the gift of immortality. In 2005 several English clubs forbade her performing the display of bloodletting, because it violates English laws against the incitement to commit suicide.
On 28 November 2005, Aural Music released the album Pleasure and Pain. Distributors throughout Europe bought the album and it was published with permission in Europe, South America, the USA, Russia, and Japan.
On 19 March 2007, they released their album Desire of Damnation. Desire of Damnation is a double CD, with live songs from The Addiction tour 2006 and some new studio songs and remixes.
Guitarist Robert "Morgoth" left the band in 2006 and was replaced by Stephan Benfante.
On 2 May 2008, they released their 8th studio album Anima Noir. With this album their sound evolves once again, taking the route of electronic/industrial gothic metal while still retaining vampiric lyrics.
In November, 2008, Theatres des Vampires announced that they would go on a temporary hiatus due to both personal and health related issued of vocalist Sonya Scarlet.
On 14 January 2011 Aural Music released the album Moonlight Waltz, their ninth studio album. A music video for the song "Carmilla" was filmed on August 28 and 29, directed by David Bracci, who worked on most of Dario Argento's films in the past decade, and has also directed the "Lilith Mater Inferorum" music video.
The name "Théâtre des Vampires" was inspired by a fictional location created by Gothic fantasy writer Anne Rice of the same name. Rice's Théâtre des Vampires is a Parisian theater, in which vampires pretend to be mortal actors, their performances consisting of the feeding on mortals disguised as part of a play and staged in front of human audiences. The location is mentioned in several of Rice's books, including Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat.
Official site: http://www.theatres-des-vampires.net
The Undertaker & the Crow
Theatres Des Vampires Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Strange sounds from the ancient unholy church, rites of black magic...
The lady in black reads the red book of Macabria, the crow on her shoulder calls the dead...
... For the ceremony of blood.... the undertaker opens the coffin of Luciferia
Now the lady in black reads the unholy words
Lady in black:
Luciferia take the knife... cut the child's throat; she raises the chalice and pours inside the blood
The crows lick deep the drops fallen on the ground, the undertaker digs the graves for the new dead comers....
The Undertaker:
"There's no return for you foreigner... eh, eh... Macabria wants you... and your soul..."
The lyrics to Theatres Des Vampires's song The Undertaker and the Crow paint a vivid and gruesome picture of a black magic ceremony in a cemetery. The opening lines set the tone with descriptions of the sounds and smells of death, which are juxtaposed with the eerie sounds of black magic coming from an ancient church. The lyrics then introduce the lady in black, who reads from the red book of Macabria while the crow on her shoulder calls forth the dead. The undertaker plays his role in the ceremony by opening the coffin of Luciferia, setting the scene for the blood sacrifice that follows.
The lyrics deepen the eerie atmosphere even further as Luciferia takes a knife and cuts the throat of a child, pouring the blood into a chalice. The crows in attendance are depicted as lapping up the blood that falls to the ground. Meanwhile, the undertaker digs graves for the "new dead comers." The lyrics end with a chilling final line from the undertaker, warning the foreigner that there is no return and that Macabria will take their soul.
Overall, the lyrics to The Undertaker and the Crow paint a disturbing picture of a dark and sinister magic ritual. The macabre imagery is vivid and unsettling, exploring themes of death, sacrifice, and the supernatural.
Line by Line Meaning
A noise in the silent cemetery... a shovel, bones, smell of death, rotten bodies...
There are eerie sounds coming from the cemetery, like someone digging graves, the stench of decomposing corpses is in the air.
Strange sounds from the ancient unholy church, rites of black magic...
There are also unsettling noises coming from an old church nearby, and it seems like dark magic rituals are taking place there.
The lady in black reads the red book of Macabria, the crow on her shoulder calls the dead...
A woman dressed in black is reading from a book of horror called Macabria, and a crow on her shoulder is summoning the dead.
... For the ceremony of blood.... the undertaker opens the coffin of Luciferia
They are preparing for a bloody ritual, and the undertaker is bringing out the coffin of a female demon named Luciferia.
Now the lady in black reads the unholy words
The woman in black is now reciting the sinister words from the book of Macabria.
"Come to us ancient spirit of Macabria... we are waiting for you, give me thee dark power of life & death... we want the foreigner..."
She is summoning an ancient spirit of horror named Macabria and asking for its dark power over life and death; she is also calling for the arrival of an outsider.
Luciferia take the knife... cut the child's throat; she raises the chalice and pours inside the blood
Luciferia, the demon from the coffin, takes a knife and slits the throat of a child as a sacrifice; then, she puts the blood into a chalice.
The crows lick deep the drops fallen on the ground, the undertaker digs the graves for the new dead comers....
The crows drink the drops of spilled blood on the ground, while the undertaker prepares new graves for more dead bodies.
"There's no return for you foreigner... eh, eh... Macabria wants you... and your soul..."
The undertaker warns the outsider that they will never be able to leave, as Macabria desires their soul.
Contributed by Andrew P. Suggest a correction in the comments below.