STILLE

Lacrimosa is a German duo consisting of Tilo Wolff and Ann Nurmi formed in 1990. They have started their own record label, Hall of Sermon and have managed to produce eight studio albums, six EPs and one Live album in that time.

Lacrimosa's music is dark, melodious, ambient and symphonic in what could be described as Darkwave / Doom metal with forays into progressive, even heavy metal. Wolff seems to be the creative force and he is creative and prolific having fifteen releases in twelve years. Wolff and Nurmi share the vocal duties with Wolff doing approximately two thirds of the vocals, despite the fact that Nurmi's voice is much better. Tilo and Ann make a striking couple, they act like a couple, I'm sure they're a couple. Tilo with his Prince style 17th century clothes and two toned hair and Ann with her pretty, full, low cut, always black dresses present a royal appearance as if they the King and Queen of Goth or better yet the Vampires. Of course sometimes Ann appears in sexy under clothes and leather like a Dominatrix. But don't let their appearance scare you. This couple play music suitable for a Symphonic Hall. In fact their 2003 release, Echoes, sounds like that's exactly where it came from.

I won't kid anyone, Lacrimosa is not for everyone. It's not accessible, Wolff's voice is barely average, they sing in German and the music is not particularly beautiful as say Therion. It is, however, extremely catchy, loaded with hooks, haunting and generally captivating, plus the music is somewhat varied and there's one song that even sounds like Metallica

After receiving Inferno, I proceeded to order their entire catalog, some 14 more CDs as I've mentioned. After having gone through the entire catalog a couple times I have determined that Stille is one of the three or four best albums, if not the best.

Lacrimosa uses guest musicians for their recording sessions and on the more recent albums have utilized the symphonic orchestras. On Stille they used the Bamberker Symphonic Orchestra and Deutsche Lunkewitz SängerInnen (German Lunkewitz Singers). Each succeeding album seems to get more complicated, lush and at times Bombastic.

I might add too, that Lacrimosa is quite generous with this album running over 70 minutes in length. Just think you could start this album in your Cd player and go do your weekly grocery shopping and put your groceries away to the last 15 or twenty minutes. Why would you want to do this? I don't know, but you could.

Stille

"Der Erste Tag" opens with the symphonic orchestra playing very pretty classical style music. Tilo and Ann perform a duet to backing choirs and some heavy metal parts at about the 4 minute mark. this song has progressive intensities as well as tendencies and it seems like three or four songs in one neat package

"Not Every Pain Hurts"

"When you have the will You learn to forgive and to forget You have to - Collect the broken pieces and Humble hearted Stand up from the place you hide If I wouldn't know to miss anything It couldn't hurt me no more Mistakes tought to build life From the ashes, that fell down to ground"

"Not every Pain Hurts" one of two songs in English, I rated this 4 stars but it would have been higher except for the merry-go-round sounding squeezebox accompaniment in places. Ann is the vocalist on this variable paced piece.

"Siehst du mich im Licht" Tilo and Ann start out sharing vocals on this catchy up tempo rock sounding number as the orchestra stays in the background except, for highlights and vocal breaks. Eventually Tilo takes over vocals

"Deine Nahe" Has a heavy metal beginning with a medium slow pace and intermittently throughout the first half of the song with Tilo singing and then the pace doubles then goes back again and back again (what do you expect on an eleven minute song) Some great piano and guitar solos in the last three minutes. A metal lovers dream.

"Stotzes Herz" this song bounces all over the place. It starts out slow and melodic with Tilo's Sonny Bono quality voice then picks up to slow medium pace then gets ethereal and electronic at the 4 minute mark and my goodness, heavy metal at the 5:30 mark leading to an marching pace uptempo climax.

"Mein Zweites Herz" starts slowly then builds up to a nice orchestra portion then a reflective portion with an organ, Tilo is the Vocalist in moderation as this is heavily instumentalized.

"Make It End" "Listen to the silence Hear your blood running Search for the truth Hear the silence Memories that made you mad Hear, oh hear inside the fear How different Is this burning Giving everything And not finding back"

"Make It End" the other song with English lyrics, a rather clever rock/metal beginning with Tilo and Ann both handling the vocals.

"Die Strasse der Zeit" I'm not even going to describe this song. It is fourteen minutes of lush, bombastic, heavily orchestrated, catchy melodies. wonderful piano and violin. I'm in awe! This is genius!

Conclusion

The trouble with describing these songs is they change so much, not from song to song but within each song. This is wonderful to listen to but a challenge to characterize.

As I earlier stated Lacrimosa is not for everybody and it may also be an acquired taste. An interesting thing about this music is it doesn't demand your attention. It works very nicely as background music.

If I have piqued your interest, compare your likes against this check list:

1) You must like long involved songs. 2) You must like songs with varying tempos. 3) You must have a proclivity for compound styles. 4) Appreciation of choirs and heavy instrumentation. 5) You must overlook Tilos mediocre vocals (it actually goes good with the music) 6) You must not have any preconceived ideas about Gothique.

Similar Artists

Therion, Nightwish, Weltenbrand, Das Vebannter Kinder Evas, Dark Sanctuary

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