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Darkness. German quartet Lacrimas Profundere have been dealing in it for nearly three decades now, and with their 13th full-length album How to Shroud Yourself with Night, they have just brought yet another dose of aural despair to their fans. Founded in 1993 by brothers Oliver (guitars) and Christopher Schmid (vocals), the band initially explored the vast expanses of melodic doom/death metal that was gaining traction in those years. Over the next decades, Lacrimas Profundere followed the genre’s evolution, embracing the same gothic influences that bands like Paradise Lost and Anathema were experimenting with at the time, and pushing them to even further extremes, to land eventually in territories not far from The 69 Eyes or HIM. The Germans have recently returned to a heavier sound with their 2019 album Bleeding the Stars, which saw new singer Julian Larre join Oliver Schmid, Dominik Scholz (drums) and Ilker Ersin (bass) in the band. With an unchanged line-up, the new album How to Shroud Yourself with Night continues to explore a heavier brand of gothic metal, mixing together influences from gothic rock, doom, and melodic groove metal/metalcore.
Lacrimas Profundere have never been shy to wear their influences on their sleeves, and the new album is no exception. Tracks like “In a Lengthening Shadow” and “An Invisible Beginning” are almost a tribute to The 69 Eyes and HIM, reproducing in painstaking detail all the tropes of the gothic rock genre, from Julian Larre’s sensual, baritonal crooning to Oliver Schmid’s energetic but melodic guitarwork. Elsewhere, Lacrimas Profundere hark back to the doom metal of their origins, like on “Shroud of Night”, where Larre’s impassioned wails bring to mind Vincent Cavanagh’s (Anathema) performance on albums like The Silent Enigma, or “The Vastness of Infinity” that is graced by a beautiful melodic guitar lead, which again could have been penned by Anathema’s Danny Cavanagh. The groove metal / metalcore influences transpire more vividly in the remaining songs, particularly on “The Curtain of White Silence” and “To Disappear in You”, the latter distinctively bringing to mind modern In Flames.
A paragraph like the one above, full of references to other bands, may give away how I ultimately feel about this album: it is hard not to use the word “derivative” when describing it. However – and this has been true for all the other Lacrimas Profundere’s albums I listened to –, the German band has two enviable, and ultimately redeeming, qualities on their side: tons of class and a knack for writing memorable but never banal melodies. Tunes like “Wall of Gloom”, “A Cloak Woven of Stars”, “Nebula”, or “Shroud of Night” offer irresistible earworms that have drawn me to this album over and over again in the past weeks. Undoubtedly, big credits go to Oliver Schmid’s songwriting. His guitarwork is always entertaining, with plenty of beautiful melodic leads as well as little, snappy riffs that keep the energy running throughout the album’s 10 songs. Julian Larre is also a remarkable talent. He is at ease with a variety of vocal styles, from gothic crooning to harsh growls to higher-register cleans, and he switches repeatedly between these styles in the course of each song. In several occasions, he double-tracks (and sometimes even triple-tracks) his vocal melodies using more than one style, creating a rich and interesting vocal overlay. Most importantly, Larre is one of those singers whose performance is made of more than just notes and rhythm, but also emotions and moods that instantly connect with the listener.
When you have such a talented vocalist in your band, it is hard not to build the songs around them, and this is in fact what happens in How to Shroud Yourself with Night. The song structures are rooted in the standard repetition of verses and choruses, leaving little space for instrumental detours and digressions from the consolidated formula, and putting the spotlight firmly on the singer. Kristian Kohlmannslehner’s production is also instrumental to this, putting Larre’s vocals front and centre in the mix and at a slightly higher volume than the other instruments. The drums are also quite prominent in the mix, in the way they often are in modern metal album productions, contributing to a sound that is slick, full and punchy. Occasionally, however, this comes at the expense of other instruments (the guitars, in particular, are often squished behind the drums-vocals combo). This is a pity because there is quite a lot (perhaps even too much) going on in the background in terms of guitar riffs and leads, as well as keyboard textures, which will get lost on the listener unless one uses headphones to listen to the album (and even then, one really needs to concentrate in order to follow what the various instruments are doing).
Despite these drawbacks, How to Shroud Yourself with Night is a fun, thoroughly entertaining album to sit through. It may not be the most original album you’ll listen to this year, but it contains a handful of killer tunes that are guaranteed to get stuck into your head thanks to very convincing and memorable melodies. While Lacrimas Profundere draw inspiration from a host of different sources, the bandare probably at their best when they combine these different influences into the same song, especially when they let their doom heritage come through in slightly more expansive compositions (“The Vastness of Infinity”, “Shroud of Night”). Further steps in this direction would be very welcome to this writer, who will continue regardless to keep an eye on the German band’s future endeavours, simply because they are one of the classiest and most consistent acts in the contemporary gothic metal/rock scene.
[Originally written for The Metal Observer]