STILLE

Symphonic Gothique music of the highest order played by Lestat and friend.

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

The cover design of this album illustrates very well the kind of images that the music of this album produced in my mind:darkness, loneliness, "adolescent heroes" looking for answers, etc. These kind of albums and bands have a very clear market, IMO: the so- called "darkies" in my city: teenagers who dress in black, think in "dark", etc. Maybe I`m wrong, but this is the impression that this album left me after listening to it and after seeing the photos of Tilo Wolff and Anne Nurmi in the booklet. There is also included a publicity page for all their albums until 1999. All the covers show a similar design, and it seems like each album is a "Chapter" of a novel or tale, telling the life of the "adolescent hero" who dresses similarly to the character that appears in Marillion`s album covers with Fish.

I found this CD recently among the CDs which belonged to my late father. One of his grandsons (who is not a teenager now and who never have dressed as a "darkie"!) gave to my father this CD as a gift some 6 years ago. I can`t remember if my father listened to this album later, but this grandson talked with us then about this band and others that he liked then, and also played other Lacrimosa`s albums to us. I never convinced him that bands like Genesis , YES or King Crimson were better than Lacrimosa, of course! And I really didn`t like very much the music that he listened then!

This album has very good arrangements, with heavy metal guitars and classical music influences. I don`t like Tilo Wolff`s voice, but I like Anne Nurmi`s voice. The main sound in this album is of distorted guitars mixed above some very good keyboard and orchestral and choral arrangements. But... it still doesn`t convice me to really like it. The drummer is very good, playing very good things sounding like he played them with a drum kit which has two bass drums.

In conclusion: this album is good, but maybe being myself forty-something in age, I tend to not like the albums made for very young people, nearly for the teenagers market. Maybe the image that Lacrimosa gives of their personalities is one thing that I really don`t like. But this album was made with quality,with a very good recording, to say something in justice about it. I really think that Lacrimosa is another "one-man band`s ego trip", and this is another thing that I don`t like very much. I left it to their fans to enjoy it.

I remember that in the mid 90s I read in the now defunct English VOX magazine an interview done wtih Sting. He said something like : "When I was a young boy, I watched the T.V., and some of my favourite bands appeared on it. I remember my father saying about them: "look at that, look at their haircuts... why do you like those bands?" Now, I sometimes watch the T.V with my kids...and when in the screen appear the bands they like...I say to them the same things that my father said to me about the bands that I liked when I was a young boy!"

I always find Lacrimosa's albums a decidedly hit-or-miss proposition, and Stille is a perfect example of this; coming out a couple of years after Inferno, which perhaps is my favourite Lacrimosa release, I find that it adopts a grandiose pomposity not justified by the gravitas of the music offered. The vocals present don't quite attain the operatic quality they're groping towards, the classical and metal influences are both drab and fail to grab the listener's attention, and on the whole the music seems sparse and minimalistic where it really cries out to be rich, lush and baroque. In short, it seems to consistently fall short of the standard it sets for itself.