Lacrimas Profundere
La naissance d'un rêve

Year 1997 A.D. These were times when the name Lacrimas Profundere could still be associated with the word band, and perhaps even the adjective honest. Nowadays, I don't feel right calling the Germans by this term; blatant love metal clone would definitely be more fitting and consistent with the style our friends have progressively adopted over the past few years. "La naissance d'un rêve" (a title that translated from French would be exactly "The Birth of a Dream") is the band's second official release, before the sum of their entire career sees the light, before fans get to enjoy that "Memorandum" which (perhaps even more so than the album in question) exudes passion, lyricism, and darkness from every note, drawing inspiration from those who were the sacred monsters of gothic/doom in the first half of the '90s: Anathema above all, but also My Dying Bride.

Right from the opener, the Teutonic combo unfolds romantic scenarios by building granite walls of guitar with a clear doom matrix around the decadent passion of classical instruments like violin and flute. The vocals are free from any excessively stiff canon: able to soar with their deep and mournful growl above the magnetic soprano vocals of violinist Anja Hötzendorfer (very similar to those of the divine Vibeke Stene of Tristania), or fluid in the recited parts, marked by an intimate and relentless suffering, the voice of the dark Christopher Schmid always manages to move. The structures of Lacrimas Profundere are quite intricate in this album: it starts with a theme that is repeatedly picked up over the long duration of the song, and as it progresses it's the disarming beauty of the violin or piano, or the velvety darkness of the orchestrations that envelops us in a vortex of magnetic melancholy, from which escape is practically impossible. Just as the waves of the sea slowly crash against the rocks at the beginning of "A Fairy's Breath", so too will the listener, helpless, find themselves colliding with their most intense and profound feelings, transported to autumnal landscapes, to cemeteries adorned with dead leaves of the typical yellowed color, by the elegiac funeral song of Lacrimas Profundere. The acoustic guitar introduces "Priamus", another track indebted to the aforementioned bands but not ugly for this reason; the merit that the band then possessed was precisely that of turning their inspiration toward a style well-tested by others, free to reaffirm its splendor for some more time, as if struck by an unstoppable wave of melancholy towards the past (in those years, the primordial bands of the gothic/doom scene were moving towards more experimental sonic shores). The intent of the Germans is then appreciable, despite the masterpieces of the masters remaining only a model to draw from, rather than representing the starting point for doing better. In this track, the folk hints and the violin outbursts of Anja are very appreciable, as well as the subdued passages created by the flute of Eva Stöger, who also plays the very important role of keyboardist (it is in fact her beautiful piano solo that sketches horizons of sadness at the end of the piece, preceded by an equally memorable duet between her instrument and the lead guitar of Oliver Schmid, brother of the band's leader and co-founder).

"Lilenmeer" looms in the mind with images of a calm sea colored by the violet reflection of a setting sun; poet Christopher recites melancholic verses in his native language at the sight of such splendor, accompanied only by a background of orchestrations and the intimate inflection of an acoustic guitar. "The Gesture Of the Gist" instead opens with cosmic keyboard sounds, which recur at the end of the track, quite anchored to slow tempos and ethereal atmospheres, except for the repeated explosion of guitar and piano in the refrain (accompanied by very harsh growls) and the melodic death bridge (unfortunately not much highlighted by the rather sparse production that favored too high volumes for the drums to the detriment of the bass, which authored more than good lines) that almost recalls early Dark Tranquillity. The whole thing pours into a lake of pain where violin and piano reign supreme: "An Orchid For My Withering Garden" is a moment of pure poetry, the triumph of elegiac visions, sculpted in the duet between Anja (no longer bound to the usual lyrical registers, but author of an intimate and disarmingly beautiful song) and Christopher (always mindful of the lesson of the most desperate and funereal Vincent Cavanagh).

In the second part, even the orchestrations demand their part, and it is Eva's fingers that weave the sonic webs of a suffering abandonment, to hurl that arrow which repeatedly pierces the heart until it bleeds. To avoid becoming too monotonous, Lacrimas Profundere seal their performance by placing in closure an atypical track like "Enchanted And In Silent Beauty", which knots the styles of the previous tracks to more energetic and vibrant accelerations and parentheses, leaning toward a stylistic modernity, but unfortunately serving as the ominous prelude to the lack of passion they would encounter starting with the release of "Burning: A wish", the real beginning of a steep downward slope.

Ten years after the release of this good effort, it's sad to see another excellent band relegated to the status of a mere sideshow in the mainstream gothic scenes, lost in the chaos of clichés created by the likes of Him, To/Die/For, and Entwine (and whoever else), a group that preferred to see throngs of screaming teenage girls infatuated by the beauty of the singer at their concerts (who, as we know, guarantee a higher rate of visibility compared to the silent yet sincere devotion of doomsters) than listeners in love with their innocent and bucolic poetry, enchanted by a world of sublime notes, masterfully recreated by Oliver and company until the release of "Memorandum", but then brutally traded for instant success, easily digestible melodies, and winks at the base Finnish love metal scene. The departures of Eva and Anja following the change of direction may not be a coincidence...