STILLE

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!"