Joy Parade

It's too bad this album is extremely hard to find nowadays. Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers went on to create four more albums on bigger labels under a truncated name, but their sophomore effort is right up there in terms of quality and is probably what got them noticed in the first place.

As pointed out by other reviewers, Flowing Tears' music is very different from what you may expect a gothic metal band to sound like, but the label still fits their distinct approach quite well. Their music has always had a stripped-back sound, with barely any keyboards or synths, and none of the orchestration or choirs or symphonic flairs used by many other bands in the genre. Instead Flowing Tears employs just guitars, bass, drums, a few keyboards (handled on Joy Parade by guitarist Benjamin Buss, better known as "Matthew Greywolf" of Powerwolf) and some occasional sound effects... and of course, Stefanie Duchêne's unique vocals.

The "Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers" albums had longer track runtimes than their major-label successors. Joy Parade was dialed back a bit after the death/doom approach of Swansongs, and sort of hit a perfect balance between lush instrumentals and passages more driven by Stefanie's vocals. Her earnest alto stands out in a genre full of soft-voiced sopranos or classically inspired singers, and takes the music in a different direction which suits the rockish instrumentals.

Repeated riffs that immerse the listener are one of the album's strong suits, and as much as I enjoy Flowing Tears' more vocal-driven later works, I can definitely feel that it's missing from there. Rffs from songs like "Purple Red Soil" and the outros to "Spirals Meet the Sea" and "The Day You Took My Breath" stand out as they can keep the listener mesmerized for a while before moving on. Joy Parade also uses a few instrumental interludes to break things up, which were probably phased out later because they realized that even the different numbers like piano-driven "Bluefield" and "Sundrops" are more impactful when you have more of these hypnotic riffs as a contrast. As short as they may be, the shorter songs are vital to Joy Parade's structure.

If there's any track that doesn't quite hold up to the same standard, it's unfortunately the closer, "The Day You Took My Breath." I love the closing riff to pieces and I love what they were going for with the acoustic intro, but there are two things that drag it down a bit. While Flowing Tears implemented most of the spoken word on the album so that it tends to blend with the instrumentation and not stand out, guitarist Manfred Bersin (also lead vocals on their debut Swansongs) sounds quite like a sore thumb with the sort-of-duet he has going on with Stefanie here. There's also some weird industrial sound effects in the midsection which try to connect the acoustic part and the outro, but come off as very clunky and stand out. Not a very good transition, unfortunately, which can yank the listener right out of the music.

In spite of the shortcomings, overall this was a very strong early output from Flowing Tears, and it's a shame it didn't get more circulation. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys downtempo or atmospheric doom metal.

This album, which now seems to be virtually unknown, was almost exactly the opposite of what I expected. I knew the current incarnation of the band to be gothic metal, and from a band name like Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers, I was expecting the most cliché sort of gothic metal- ultra-dramatic symphonic keyboards that dominated the music, vocals which were even more dramatic than the keyboards, and in general the most over-the-top sort of wallowing in angst and sadness. The lyrics would likely be about doomed romance, suicide, and/or vampires. I also figured it would probably not be very good. I was wrong on all counts- Joy Parade not only proved to be one of the best albums I'd heard in a while, it also ended up defying nearly all of the other expectations I had of it.

To start with, it's not really gothic metal- or if it is, it's very different from the gothic metal norm. The album seems to lie at the intersection of a few different subgenres. The Archives describe the band in their Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers incarnation as atmospheric doom metal- this accurately describes their debut album, but Joy Parade is often a little too fast-paced to fit entirely comfortably into the doom metal category (it's pretty mid-paced, for the most part, if generally on the slower end of it), and though it's certainly a very atmospheric album, that doesn't quite seem to be the main point- it's very melodic, song-oriented music, and the atmosphere, as strong as it is, seems to be more in service to that than an end in itself. It has a bit of gothic metal's melodic sensibility, but (other than being generally downbeat) seems to reject almost every gothic metal cliché in both aesthetic and sound- it doesn't have a trace of the symphonic element often found in gothic metal (actually, it never tries to be epic and/or bombastic in any way) and takes a very different approach to melancholy than the average gothic metal band, but more on that later. Basically, it sounds pretty much nothing like Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil, or Theatre of Tragedy. In some ways, it's reminiscent of Katatonia's post-Brave Murder Day era- there's something of the same "downbeat rock" sound- but it makes far more heavy usage of keyboards and atmospherics than Katatonia, and has a somewhat different songwriting sensibility in general. (Though the song "Trust" has a very Katatonia-like sound, so much so that I suspect it's a tribute.) If I absolutely had to classify it, I'd say it's halfway between atmospheric doom and whatever genre Tonight's Decision is, but ultimately the album is pretty much sui generis.

This is certainly a melancholic album, but not at all in the way one might expect from the name of the band- it's actually quite understated in its approach. The general emotional feeling of the album is of a quiet, resigned melancholy, of a deep sadness always kept hidden from the outside world, of wistful nostalgia for a better time which will never return, of (to recall the famous Thoreau quote) "lives of quiet desperation". There's a stoical feeling to it somehow, a sense of pushing onwards and putting on a good face despite a broken heart- in many ways, this makes it a far more effective and poignant album. The melancholy of it feels far more genuine than that of so many gothic metal bands, and the resigned, stoical quality of it deepens rather than lessens the emotional power of the music.

Much of this quality is due to the vocals, performed by Stephanie Duchêne, who has a pleasant, slightly husky voice that's somewhat deeper than average for female vocalists in the genre, and a distinctive way of singing. Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers later covered Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on their Swallow EP (very well, at that), and the influence of Ian Curtis on Duchêne's vocal style is fairly clear. Though her style is much more melodic than his was, she has something of the same weary, resigned quality in her vocal performance, and it suits the music perfectly. She sometimes goes dramatic and soaring, but for the most part is a pretty low-key vocalist, in a way that perfectly suits the music- and yet, in her understated way, she's also one of the most powerfully emotive vocalists I've heard in metal.

Beyond the vocals, what stands out the most is the quality of songwriting. Nothing here is forgettable or seems like filler, even the short little instrumental tracks. The songs are filled with memorable hooks, the guitar work is excellent, and the melodies are sad and beautiful. And, although it's a very accessible album, it's also not watered-down or simple in terms of composition. There tends to be quite a bit going on in each song, and the entire album has a very thick, full sound, both due to the depth of the music itself and the sound of the instruments that play it. Though it's certainly not the heaviest music in the world (and isn't trying to be), the guitars have a full, weighty sound that hearkens back to the band's doom metal beginnings, the keyboards are very present without overpowering the guitars and add a great deal of atmosphere and emotional color to the music, and the band does some interestingly different things with the drums at times- notably, the industrial drum beat on part of "Odium", the distant, echoing drums at one point on "Trust", and the strange clacking percussion on the latter half of "Spirals Meet The Sea". I don't know exactly what the band's influences were, but it would not surprise me at all to find that they'd been listening to shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive- notably, those bands were also a major influence on Katatonia, and Flowing Tears & Withered Flowers, on this album, seem to be going in a similar but divergent direction.

Lyrics are all in the surreal, cryptic and personal vein- they aren't upbeat at all, but for the most part aren't super over-the-top angsty, either. (They do kind of go into over-the-top territory on the closing track, "The Day You Took My Breath", but something about Stephanie Duchêne's resigned delivery of them neutralizes it somewhat.)

The highlight of the album is probably the title track, a moody, atmospheric song that builds up in intensity as it goes on in a very cathartic way. It's marked by a particularly powerful and emotional vocal performance from Duchêne- she starts off quiet, low, and distant at the acoustic beginning of the song, and goes high (or higher, rather- she's never anywhere close to soprano vocals) and soaring when the guitars go electric. It's as if the stoic facade is cracking, just a little, and cracking more and more as the song goes on, but never breaking. It's an amazingly poignant vocal performance. The song as a whole is a gorgeous, haunting piece of music, marked by what are some of the saddest and most memorable melodies I've heard.

Other standouts are "Odium" with its memorable chorus, industrial-sounding percussion, and doomy yet catchy riffs, "Trust", which sounds like it could be a lost Katatonia song (I don't know if they'd heard Discouraged Ones, which came out the same year, but the guitar sound on "Trust" is so close to how the guitars on that album sound that it's either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate tribute), and "Rainswept", a gentle acoustic song that closes with a hauntingly beautiful and melancholy keyboard-and-acoustic-guitar melody. "Rainswept" is also noteworthy for how it uses a quiet sample of (unsurprisingly) falling rain- it runs through most of the song, but is a barely audible background noise through most of it, except during the beginning and end, where it picks up in volume and intensity just as the song starts to fade out. It's a subtle and very well done effect, one which is a particularly fine illustration of the band's talent for creating atmosphere.

The album concludes with "The Day You Took My Breath", which, despite starting off with a beautiful acoustic part, is probably the lowlight of the album. This is mostly due to the fact that a male singer (FT&WF's vocalist on their debut album) who's… not as good as Stephanie Duchêne makes his first appearance on the album on this song, and honestly kind of brings the whole thing down. He has a very heavy accent (so does Duchêne, actually, but in her case it doesn't matter at all), and mumbles more than sings, and I think he was trying to go for the same sort of resigned, world-weary tone that D brings to the music, but it just doesn't sound very good. The song proper only goes on for a few minutes before it fades into the sound of wind, industrial noise and guitar feedback- then the male vocalist briefly comes in again, and then it goes into a decent but not amazing instrumental metal passage which closes out the album. It's a somewhat strange and not entirely fitting ending. It doesn't outright suck or anything, but it does bring down the album's score a bit for me- the song in general seems like something which didn't quite reach its full potential. The acoustic part is a very nice piece of music, though, even though I feel it would have been improved if they either left out the male vocals or got a better singer to do them.

Even if Joy Parade isn't a flawless album, it's a truly excellent one- beautiful and poignant and brilliantly composed and performed. I consider it to be something of an unrecognized classic. The band would later change their name to simply "Flowing Tears", and eventually evolve into a much more typical gothic metal band, losing all but one of their original members, and in my opinion also losing all of their best qualities in the process. This album, however, is a gem- one that sorely deserves to be lifted out of the obscurity it now is in. Very highly recommended if you can find it, and a must-hear if you like Katatonia or Left Hand Solution, and especially if you like both.