45%

It is sad to witness the slow collapse of one of my favourite bands. The album ‘Auf Deinen Schwingen’ does not leave any hope. I could say ‘Life will never be the same again’... with tears in my yes.

Their previous album ‘Gezeiten’ [2004] included many rock music factors, but altogether the album sounded professional, rather coherent and contained old, electronic sounds of LAI but made contemporary. Tracks like ‘Believe in me’ and ‘Without you’ from the previous album prepared fans for simple, rock tunes such as ‘Run away’ or ‘Dying day’- the weakest points of ‘Auf Deinem Schwingen’. ‘Gezeiten’ didn’t prepare me though for such a trite and for the fact that every other track on this album sounds the same.
‘Auf Deinem Schwingen’ is strongly guitar, rock style- ‚Du Siehst Mich Niht’, ‚Aus Ende der Zeit’ could remind of ‚Masquerade’ from ‚Gezeiten’, only they are very weak and frail. The same applies to singles- but those are at least quite dynamic. ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Nur Du’ don’t match up to ‘5 Jahre’, however they are nice to listen to while vacuming. Fortunately, Thomas does not give his vocal on ‘Nur Dich’- as that would riun this track. Musicians from L’Ame Immortelle daringly refer to ‘more simple’ tracks of Lacrimosa; ; ‘Dein Herz’ sounds very much like ‘Alleine zu zweit’ or even ‘Halt Mich’. Fortunately Thomas doesn’t try to copy querulous voice of Tilo Wolf, beacuse that would sound grotesque; although it sounds like he tries to do so in ‘Wohin’ and the results are unfortunately very poor. However Thomas’s vocal irritates and disturbs; when listening to Sonja I would love to hear groaning as in ‘Slut’... Her vocal experiments from ‘Phoenix’ sound good. Sonja proved on several occasions that she is an amazing vocalist and I’m glad that she progresses well in her other project Persephone. Musicians sometimes refer to their lyrical past, not necessarily musical- ‘Wohin’ quotes ‘Aus den Ruinen’ from ‘Als die Liebe Starb’ album.(And by the way, ‘Fallen Angel’ already quoted ‘Broken’). Someone could call it ‘recycling’. Tracks are schematic and one could have an impression that they were composed by force. The album can’t be saved even by the melody from ‘In Dein Leben’ neither by inspired single ‘Dein Herz’ and its trashy video. ‘The Last Will’- is a track taken alive from Persephone’s albums- if you replaced pseudo-symphonic keyboard part with a quartet, you would get ‘The Last Song’ from ‘Mera Sangeet Kho Gaya’ (even the subject of these tracks is similar). If you took away the guitars from ‘Sometimes love is not enough’- you’d also get the feeling of Persephone. Surprisingly, those two tracks sound good. ‘Destiny’ is also a positive on ‘Auf deinen Schwingen’, it reminds me a bit of industrial, electronic ‘Es zieht dich Davon’ mixed with dance ‘Kingdom’ (and violin sounds very nice there). ‘Der letzte Akt’ stands out thanks to its dramatic and pompous style.

I didn’t expect a’ perfect gothic discoteque’ from ‘Auf Deinen Schwingen’ with ‘Dann HAbe Ich Umsonst Gelebt?’. Neither I believed that I can find a track to match up to ‘Tiefster Winter’ on this new album. However, I expected a proper successor to ‘Gezeiten’ and what I received doesn’t neccessarily satisfy me. The album is maybe nice, but poor. While listening to it, I appreciate the music past of the band even more. It’s a good phenomenon when the band evolves, penetrates new areas of music, but only when it means progres. In this case, the band is regressing and not a hit or a video can save it.


Tracklista:
01. Auf Deinen Schwingen
02. Herzschlag
03. Du Siehst Mich Nicht
04. Nur Du
05. Phönix
06. Destiny
07. Sometimes Love Is Not Enough
08. Run Away
09. Wohin
10. In Dein Leben
11. Last Will
12. Der Letzte Akt
13. Bis Ans Ende Der Zeit
14. Dying Day
15. Dein Herz (Single Edit)

Other articles:

• Castle Party 2015 - 2015-07-26 (Live reports)
• L'Ame Immortelle - Namenlos - 2008-09-16 (Music reviews)
• L'Ame Immortelle - Als die Liebe Starb - 2008-03-26 (Music reviews)

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