'Headstones' begins with one bloody great riff! Many would sell their souls for this kind of stuff. And I'm glad to say that there are more of similar ones here. This was released in a time before "stoner rock", but this has some same elements as that genre. Basically this is heavy metal, but this isn't too heavy in any standards.

Lake Of Tears (LOT from now on) can hit the groove when they need to, but they can also make it all feel dreamlike. The music changes seamlessly from the groovy heavy metal songs (e.g. 'A Foreign Road', 'Burn Fire Burn') to atmospheric, sad songs (e.g. 'Headstones', 'Twilight'). Sometimes there's some sound effects to build the atmosphere (such as rain, thunder and bird song). Synths bring more gothic feeling, but that has been kept quite low which is very positive in my ears. Basically, Black Sabbath created doom metal, so they are an obvious influence with Swedish Cemetary ('Black Vanity' (1994) is partly quite, even very, near to this). But there's a couple of non-metal things: 'Twilight's synth solo sounds like coming from a Nik Kershaw album and synths on some songs are like The Silk Road music by Kitaro (TV program). Acoustic guitars are great, and soloing with them is even greater. Distorted guitars and bass are dirty, but powerless production cleans them too much.

Vocals are individual, but they are incompetent in many ways. When Daniel Brennare (also guitars) sings at higher range, or powerful way, it sounds like he doesn't hit the right notes or somehing. He isn't a very good singer at all, but some lower parts are much, much better. The vocals are semi-melodic, Mr. Brennare's not trying too much, which keeps it better. His voice flows over the music and doesn't always fit into the picture, I'm afraid. 'Twilight' has a funny effect on the voice and it really works, by the way. Lyrics, which are well enough written, are total doom stuff, ranging from death to gods and horror tales.

The music is mostly good and there's a couple of great tracks ('Twilight', 'Headstones', even over 13-minute 'The Path...'), but it could be rougher. The vocals haunt me and they also haunt this whole album... It feels sometimes that the guy is singing some other song. Sad, atmospheric feeling of the music gets a thumb up. Try it if you can stand the vocals, since this is a very interesting heavy metal record. And original one, too, for a big part.

Rating: 7½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
11/11/2002 14:14