While Heaven Wept
Vast Oceans Lachrymose

They burst onto the scene with the debut "Sorrow of the angels" and confirmed their talent with "Of empires forlorn", now in 2009, the Americans While Heaven Wept are back, six years after their previous work, with their third full-length titled Vast Oceans Lachrymose. Over the years, the band encountered various financial problems and several lineup changes, which led former singer Tom Phillips to focus exclusively on guitar and the singing role was entrusted to the voice of Rain Irving. This choice, after listening to the album, leaves a bitter taste: Phillips' voice was absolutely suited to the band's melodic and decadent doom, while Irving has a tone excessively "off" from the genre, more suited to power than doom. The result, therefore, is the presence of a wide intervention of melodies, with some passages proper to power and the powerful guitar strokes of doom origins relegated to a secondary role.

For those who had eagerly awaited the band's third album, the listening turned out to be at least bewildering if not even traumatic. The band shows a desire to expand their musical horizons and to appropriate even solutions not entirely congenial to their style. Vast Oceans Lachrymose thus becomes a cauldron of doom passages of rare beauty, overly melodic power flashes, and a massive dose of orchestrations. In this mix (not entirely successful) of a blend of fairly distant genres, the emotional and sentimental charge that this genre carries is unchanged and can also be found in the band's lyrics: "The furthest shore" is a glaring and grandiose example with its 15-minute duration. Accelerations, melodic flashes (the one around two minutes is stunning) and vocal lines suitable to Irving's tone, who manages to give a great performance in the excellent refrain of the song. The opening track is of absolute compositional quality and retraces the path traced in the past by another colossal opener like "Thus with a kiss I die." "To wander the void" begins to detach from the band’s musical habitat with a more heavy-oriented rhythm and little incisive and stretched vocal lines. This half misstep foreshadows "Living sepulchre", full-fledged power metal and for this reason out of place on a record of this kind. Luckily, despite the choice to broaden their compositional horizon, the Americans can still make great music returning to the inspiration of the old times: "Vessel" is a semi-ballad with a nostalgic flavor. A piece of absolute level that unfolds within man’s difficulties to lead him towards happier destinations away from the problems of today’s society. The title track is a dreamy track that spirals in on itself through continuous sweet melodic guitar plays but never quite takes off. The album closes with an epilogue that adds nothing to the band’s career and to the album itself.

I have never liked doing track by track reviews, but in this case, I found it necessary to highlight the alternation between well-framed songs and others a bit useless and far from the genre that the band has proposed with a fair amount of critical success in the past few years. This Vast Oceans Lachrymose, crowned with a beautiful cover, does not possess the musical quality that made me fall in love with their music from the first listen of "Sorrow of the angels." This third chapter, leaving aside two truly valid episodes like "Vessel" and "The furthest shore," doesn’t fully make an impact, but remains in the anonymity of an increasingly struggling genre.

1. "The Furthest Shore" (15:51)
2. "To Wander The Void" (6:28)
3. "Living Sepulchre" (4:01)
4. "Vessel" (7:47)
5. "Vast Oceans Lachrymose" (5:03)
6. "Epilogue" (3:13)