Lacrimosa – Lichtgestalt (2005)

Rounding up the Lacrimosa re-releases brought to North America by End of Light records, today we have “Lichtgestalt”. As a perfect trip down in memory lane, this release is one of our favorite ones of the band and it was a pleasure to see it released in North America with a bonus CD. Featuring a bit of a mixture of older Lacrimosa with the “Echoes” album, this release is very powerful and well-crafted with fragile Orchestral elements and powerful guitars.

Tilo Wolff and Anne Nurmi do an excellent job in bringing back (after “Echoes”) the distorted guitar to its rightful place and pair it with beautiful instrumentation and highly emotional atmospheres. Since 11-minute opener the band creates a very emotional and dark atmosphere, but it also employs some aggression in terms of harsh vocals, commanding guitars, and a pummeling bass guitar line. The typical Lacrimosa-like songs “Kelch der Liebe” and “Lichtgestalt” are reminders of their “Stille” era and had us remembering those good old-days.

“My Last Goodbye” is our favorite song in this release due to its very dark and epic feeling, both Tilo’s and Anne’s vocals are excellent and the overall song structure is very well created, in particular the grandiose highly-climactic ending. The cinematic sadness continues with the even more depressive “The Party is Over”, a very minimalistic song that is both chilling and heart wrenching.

Things get back to the ‘happier’ side of things with the powerful “Lezte Ausfahrt:Leben”. The band closes the album with yet another emotional epic with “Hoheled der Liebe” and its powerful atmosphere. The dreamy guitar work and orchestrations are epic, a truly Lacrimosa-worthy closing for such an excellent release.

The bonus CD features the single version of the super sad (and very good) “The Party is Over”. “Promised Land” is a track that originally appeared on the Japanese version of “Fassade”, and since it has the whole electronic/techno vibe, we really don’t like it too much. The powerful “Road to Pain” was originally featured on the Mexican edition of “Echoes”, and while a bit chaotic, it is a pretty good song indeed. The last track of this CD is an Atrocity remix of “Siechst du mich im licht”, a song we greatly enjoyed on the “Stille” album, but not so much in this heavy-but-weird remix.

Overall, as any true Lacrimosa fan knows “Lichtgestalt” is an excellent release, but what sells this End of Light release is the incursion of the bonus CD with hard to find tracks from the band. It is very interesting for us to review this release almost 7 years since it was released and notice how timeless the band’s sound is and the high quality behind the production of their albums. If you are looking to get into the band, this is as well a pretty good album that you can pick up to start enjoying their musical vision.

Release: 2011

Country: Switzerland/Germany