Lake of Tears - Moons and Mushrooms
Dockyard 1 - DY100302 - 27 April 2007
by Tom Strutton
Lake of Tears have been around the block for a while now, this being the Swedish act’s seventh studio album. Hands up, their name has never graced my ears up until now, although a little research tells me that the albums they released in the mid '90s were well received by critics. The band parted ways shortly after the release of their fourth album in 1999, but reunited in 2003. Apparently out of boredom. I should point out that, wanting to give
Moons and Mushrooms a fair trial, I decided to conduct my research
after forming an opinion of it. With hindsight, it is now clear that this is a band that most definitely reformed out of boredom. Ironically, their way of shirking boredom results in us inheriting it.
When
Moons and Mushrooms landed on my desk I was lost as to what to expect. The cover art certainly does justice to its title (or vice versa): an astronaut stands on what appears to be a moon populated by mushrooms as far as the eye can see. It may be a signifier to some that the lack of creative effort involved in setting visual imagery to project title, in this case, is indicative of the lifeless audio content awaiting the listener on this stale and underwhelming album. But it is unfair to say that this record is a disappointment – for that to be the case, prior expectations would necessarily have been high – and as it stands, it is merely a testament to the disappointing fact that there will always be morons in the record industry who worship mediocrity and overlook talent.
So, I’m not going to personally slate
Lake of Tears. Instead, I will use that time to pick my jaw up off the floor, having been gobsmacked that some people out there believed that producing, packaging, and promoting this record was a worthwhile use of time and resources.
Throughout
Moons and Mushrooms we are plied with the most uninspired of retro classic rock riffs, misguidedly coupled with a generic industrial metal guitar tone and marred by an uninspired attempt at fusion with dance overtones. It really doesn’t seem to know its own place in the history of music, lacking in confidence, as it does, of vision and execution. Less-than-stellar songwriting, nothing remarkable by way of individual performances, and completely forgettable: like the unimaginative correspondence between its title and cover art,
Moons and Mushrooms isn’t ambitious or demanding enough to warrant attention.
Official Lake of Tears Website
Official Dockyard 1 Website
