Autumn Tears
The Hallowing

Sublime and indefinable. "The Hallowing" [2007], the sixth work by Autumn Tears after the quadrilogy "Love Poems for Dying Children" [1996-2000] and "Eclipse" from 2004, is pure romantic gothicism, a glorious and final synthesis of decades of neoclassical experimentation, endowed with all the necessary traits to ascend into the realms of the best symphonic gothic ever crafted, with an added profound radicalism that draws more from the classics (Bach, Brahms, Haydn, and Mahler) than from the heralds of darkwave (Dead Can Dance, Lycia, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Sopor Aeternus).

An unsettling and evocative Te Deum opens the initial "Dies Irae," but the organ impromptu soon fades into an intense requiem for organ and viola of Teutonic gloom, and the sacred suggestions become increasingly romantic: a diluted spleen will rapidly gain dominance over the "mystical," and from here it will unravel with gentle melancholy for the rest of the tracks, which will settle on a powerful Renaissance chamber music turned gothic with soft medieval tones and reverberated, minimalist piano scores à la Erik Satie. An almost religious ecstasy surmounts a "pure" chamber-like Manichaeism, entirely acoustic, free from the proto-ambient and post-punk influences of darkwave: no more synthetic gusts à la Sam Rosenthal of Black Tape for a Blue Girl, as used in their past albums; now, the sonic liturgies are composed only of winds and strings, masterfully conducted and arranged by pianist (former keyboardist) Ted Tringo. And Laurie Ann Haus - the replacement for the previous vocalist Erika, co-founder of the group along with Tringo - guides them with a crystalline voice.

The Central European darkness (Nico docet), a canon for the neoclassical darkwave scene, with which the album often flirts, does not represent the destination of the "theme," but the departure. Because the result is something that goes beyond mere gothic, yet it equally rightfully belongs to a genre that indeed was and still is, precisely for its timelessness, an inexhaustible source of dark gems like this one.