Lacrimas Profundere is a German band that started off playing doom death in the mid 90s and along the way released one classic and often overlooked album in Memorandum. That album was drenched with the doomy romanticism of prime Anathema and is to this day just a terrific doom metal album. After Memorandum came one more album that could be called doom metal before the band dropped the doom, dropped the metal and started playing some sort of weak goth-rock with an extra helping of Mozzarella.

Come 2008 and the band released its eighth studio album, Songs for the Last View. The template for the music is the same. This is all mostly tepid goth-rock that owes more to the likes of HIM and Sisters of Mercy than it does to any sort of metal band. The songs are all simple HIM like sing-a-longs with perhaps a dash of latter day Paradise Lost’s keyboard tinkling and some sub- Depeche Mode type atmospherics. The problem with bands like this is, they seem so safe in the ascribed parameters that there is simply no venturing out. The music is stereotyped and the band is happy to play the same song over and over again. In fact when a rare guitar solo pops up in Suicide Sun it feels like the band is doing something truly great when it is actually a pretty crappy solo. Dear Amy sounds like Paradise Lost circa Symbol of Life mixed in with some modern radio rock and is dreadful while A Dead Man with its keyboard, vocal harmonies and atmospheric string section sounds like it was written hoping for an endorsement from Zippo lighters. I don’t have any problems with ballads but this is just Mozzarella overload.