| SOPOR AETERNUS & THE ENSEMBLE OF SHADOWS
DEAD LOVERS' SARABANDE ALBUM APOCALYPTIC VISION RELEASE: SPRING 1999 REVIEW: MAY 22, 1999 
This album is delivered with a very dark, pretentious and quite funny booklet where the band's main man performs several poses very well. Pretentiousness is a keyword when one shall describe both the music and the image here. Musically is it unique, professional and amazing. The music has a taste of the middle ages and feels genuine, probably because it's performed with real instruments. The lack of electronics and the fact that the guitars are entirely acoustic create an original soundscape. The combination of the melancholic music and the mourning vocals does not make this a party album, although the excellent track "Hades Pluton" is very suitable for a dancefloor. A dancefloor filled with dark dressed people wearing lots of make-up, that is. In this song the vocals differ quite a lot and shows the vocalist's varied voice. In fact, the vocals are very well performed and original throughout the entire album. The lyrics are morbid and depressive, which might explain why I find them both entertaining and interesting. The reason why this is rather funny is probably the combination of the extremely tormented voice and the exaggerated lyrics. Some might have called this album pathetic but I would rather call it a masterpiece and I doubt that anything better will be released this year. I have to say that the originality is amazing and I almost doubted that it was possible to create innovative music in these days where clones and plagiarism seems to reign. JOHAN ASTEMARK |
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