Swansongs

Flowing Tears may be best known for a stripped-back gothic metal sound with alto vocals, but a casual listener could be forgiven for thinking their debut, ironically named Swansongs, was written and recorded by a completely different band. This album is easily described as atmospheric death/doom, with much longer songs, a more detached sound and a different vocalist. There's signs of their potential here, but at this stage, it had yet to be fully realized.

Swansongs has the raw production and sound you'd expect from a band just getting started on an indie label in the 1990s, though I can't really hold this against them, and the mixing actually gives the acoustic-focused sections an airier sound that suits them well. There are also some unique features peppered throughout such as harsh vocals, actual guitar solos and a standout uptempo section like the outro to "Fallen Leaves," and a few albums would pass before Flowing Tears dabbled in these elements again. Which is fine, because the album is at its greatest in songs like "Arion" and "And I Drown," when it forgoes all of those experiments in favor of mesmerizing repeated riffs with the simple acoustic-and-drums setup.

Unfortunately, the album is inconsistent in multiple ways. First of all, it's not just that Manfred Bersin's vocals are completely different from the altos Flowing Tears are best remembered for, because his performance is also... bad on its own. And badly implemented. He switches between three barely-different modes: "soft" vocals which are semi-sung, semi-murmured, "loud" vocals which are semi-spoken, semi-shouted, and "harsh" vocals which are semi-spoken, semi-growled. Overall it strikes me as a very poor man's substitute for Johan Edlund. He sounds lifeless and sometimes even runs contrary to the music, to the point where everything might just sound better as an instrumental.

"Waterbride" is a good example of what happens where the rest of the band goes wrong. It starts with a beautiful acoustic section which wouldn't have felt out of place had it appeared on Joy Parade or Jade, but everything falls apart when the song suddenly drops into an overbearing doom passage with the half-growl vocals, then goes back and forth almost as if it were two songs which were poorly edited together. It feels like the band skipped a beat and there's not enough buildup before some of the heavier passages.

It's kind of a shame Flowing Tears never re-recorded Swansongs with a later lineup, because it feels like the overall sound when fronted by either Stefanie Duchêne or Helen Vogt could have given these songs a breath of new life. Swansongs has some moments of brilliance here and there, but at this early stage, they weren't quite ready to use everything at their disposal.