Fall, I Will Follow

Throughout the years, German combo Lacrimas Profundere have rarely shone for their personality or unique sound. Starting as melodic doom/death metal act, they quickly followed suit with the genre trend when bands like Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride started incorporating gothic rock/metal elements into their sound. While Lacrimas Profundere cannot claim first-mover advantage in this evolution, their previous albums showed at least an enviable talent for balancing different influences with taste and class. Released in 2002, Fall, I Will Follow is the exception to that rule: it’s a rather clumsy, copycat effort to jump on the “commercial” gothic rock/metal bandwagon that had been kick-started a few years prior by bands like H.I.M. and The 69 Eyes.

Lack of class is a vague descriptor, so let me unpack it for you. First problem: the songwriting is as formulaic as it can get. There is a clear template used for all the songs on this album: quiet, moody verses played in slow tempo are contrasted with faster, energetic choruses. There are almost no departures from this simple formula, which quickly grows stale across the 46 minutes of the album. Second problem: for this formula to work, one needs at least some good, catchy melodies in the choruses. This is virtually never the case across the 10 songs on this album. The vocal lines are agreeable, but pass by without sticking. They also exploit very tried-and-true cadences and contours, and it is hard to shake off the feeling that you surely have heard those exact melodies in some other gothic album before. The other major problem with the vocal melodies is that singer Christopher Schmid struggles immensely to deliver them in a convincing (read: controlled, non-pitchy) way. To his credit, Schmid was here in the middle of a transition from “growler” to “clean singer” so he was facing quite a learning curve. On previous albums, he solved the conundrum by adopting a half-spoken croon similar as Vincent Cavanagh’s style in the early Anathema albums. That approach was perfect for the doom/gothic tunes of an LP like Burning: A Wish, but it would not have worked on the new chorus-driven songs, which instead require proper singing to deliver the (supposedly catchy) melodies. Hence, the struggle.

Inevitably, the combination of weak melodies and weak vocals is a major setback for the album. But it is not the only setback, unfortunately. Oliver Schmid’s guitar playing, which was a highlight in previous albums, is also much less impressive here. This may be due to the fact that he is trying to work with the constraints of the simpler, radio-friendlier songs, but his guitar licks are rarely compelling or interesting, as they are often based on 3 or 4 notes, repeated endlessly and with little variation. This adds considerably to the sense of repetitiveness I was describing earlier.

Ultimately, a lot of the songs on the album blur mercilessly together, dogged by similar tempos, dynamics and structure. The one track that stands out is also the only one where Lacrimas Profundere try and break away from the formula that dominates the rest of the songwriting: “Sear Me Pale Sun”. This track (whose title suggests a possible tribute to My Dying Bride) starts in a similar vein as much of the rest of the album, building up from a piano intro to a pleasant, easy-listening goth rock tune in the vein of The 69 Eyes / H.I.M. Suddenly, however, around 3 minutes in the song veers into a completely different direction: the tempo slows down dramatically and an ominous Hammond and sinister percussions occupy the entire soundscape. It makes for an eerie, totally unexpected development that is nevertheless pulled off with class – a glimpse into the band’s considerable talent that got somewhat lost on the rest of the album.

I wish Fall, I Will Follow contained more songs like “Sear Me Pale Sun”, less concerned with immediacy and commercial appeal and more keen to explore the boundaries of doom/gothic music. Alas, that song remains an isolated episode in a sea of unexceptional tunes. It’s hard to imagine I will revisit this album any time soon, when there are so many better examples of this genre out there (H.I.M., The 69 Eyes, Sentenced, Darkseed). Approach with caution.