Audio CD review:
Lake of Tears - Forever Autumn

Lake of Tears - Forever Autumn

Band: Lake of Tears Title: Forever Autumn Rating: Release Date: 1999-08-24 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: So Fell Autumn Rain 2: Hold on Tight 3: Forever Autumn 4: Pagan Wish 5: Otherwheres 6: The Homecoming 7: Come Night I Reign 8: Demon You/Lily Anne 9: To Blossom Blue

Another Great LOT Album At first I did not think it was that great but then it started to grow on me. After the fantastic A Crimson Cosmos I did not know what to expect when I got this cd. So Fell Autumn Rain (great cello and piano) and Pagan Wish (bitchin groove & lyrics) are simply awesome songs. Forever Autumn, Homecoming, and Otherwheres are perfect for the fall season. Listening to Lake Of Tears truly takes me away to another world. It's time to light some Cosmic Weed. I give this album 4. 5 stars!. A band with sophistication to spare. The terms seems too restrictive for this band's music which, though ripping and electric-guitar-based on many songs, also contains elements of light and shade that remind me more of Led Zeppelin's folk/hard rock hybrids than the overamplified sludge of Black Sabbath. After listening to Forever Autumn, I feel it's almost unfair to call Lake of Tears "metal". And many tracks on Forever Autumn (eg. "Otherwheres" and "Forever Autumn") show off a melodic sense and quiet pensiveness that provide the perfect foil for the fiery electric-guitar work on rockier tracks like "Pagan Wish". Unlike My Dying Bride (my first introduction to this sort of classical-music-influenced, strings-laden, moody metal), Lake of Tears sports a much better vocalist who opts to sing (albeit aggressively, with plenty of edge and snarl) instead of groan, and the band's arrangements and panache for dynamics are every bit as good as My Dying Bride's. One writer called this "melodic death metal". Judging from the band's choice of arrangements and eerie imagery (reflected both in the lyrics and the album art, featuring a chaste woman apparently approached by a black-cloaked figure straight out of the cover of Black Sabbath's first album) that's like a twisted marriage of pastoral elegy and metal aggression, I think the term "death metal" isn't really fair in this case. But melodic it is, and an album that has the potential to please both headbangers and armchair listeners. Excellent doom metal! It was therefore with some hesitation that I ordered this album based upon the excellent reviews it had been receiving. I, self-professed lover of power metal and Gothenburg more then anything, usually do not like slower moody doom style metal very much. Up until this time I had only really listened to Black Sabbath as far as slower gloomy sounding metal went and for doing so nearly missed out on this wonderful album. It might be slow but truly, the pace of this album is perfect. Not once do you sit there and wish it would hurry up and get to the point. Also while it is very gloomy, in doing so it paints a near perfect soundtrack to an overcast autumn afternoon. Sad and depressing as that subject might be I could not help but feel slightly more cheerful by just how well it was done. The music switches off between more metal-esque songs like So Fell The Autumn Rain, Pagan Wish and Demon You/Lily Ann and quite non-metal but touching songs like To Blossum Blue and Forever Autumn. Fans and metal and non-metal alike should find this album enthralling and one of the most emotional works heard in a long time. While their record company might keep them down by not giving them money to tour it is a shame as Lake Of Tears deserve a LOT (pun not intended) of credit for creating such an album as this. You can see a complete list of all Lake of Tears discography, or go back to the Lake of Tears tabs