AUTUMN TEARS — The magic of Crown of the Clairvoyant

The project of Ted Tringo, composer, pianist, and lyricist of Autumn Tears, is back. The band started from the darkwave mists and has arrived at an unclassifiable genre. It mixes the solemnity of classical and symphonic music with gothic metal moods, creating works of extreme beauty.

Crown of the Clairvoyant from Autumn Tears is here.

This is also true for Crown of the Clairvoyant. Here, a real cathedral sound is created. A choir and an orchestra of both classical and ethnic instruments collaborate with the band.
To open this new full-length of the now thirty-year-old line-up is Silhouettes at Sunset, where a lute (perhaps an oud) opens into a mystical song. Lunar Coronation is a lyrical and symphonic piece. With a solemn gait.

Between neofolk and darkwave

The neofolk matrix of this new album finds its greatest representation in Ancestral Premonition with the participation of Francesca Nicoli of Ataraxia, who brings a darkwave and ancestral breath at the same time. But it is also true that, in this song, there is a limit to the complexity and sound stratification of the work, where the voice seems to wander without a real connection to the sound fabric. But this is a bit of the risk of a work like this, where you try to melt many metals to achieve alchemical sublimation.

Crown of the Clairvoyant feat. Francesca Nicoli

We return to more easily travelled tracks, but always with a certain amount of risk, in Ghosts and Empaths, where the vision of the Great Work seems to pass from the spagyric phase to the spiritual one. The now liquefied raw material sees the light of the Homunculus that is about to be born. Francesca Nicoli returns to The Knell of my Birth-hymn, where the song of the astral bride meets piano notes and ancestral voices that seem to invite you to an initiatory dance. The curtain opens on the unknown dimension. Strings and brass grow together with the choirs in this universal chant that speaks to us deeply.

Martyrdom – Catharsis (Where Gods Go to Die)

The neoclassical sweetness of Bloodline Offering is an apparent pause in the ritual in which we participate. But at the same time, it contains something disturbing, as if, behind a reassuring appearance, there were a terrible secret too long guarded. A touch of Wim Mertens seems to inhabit the introduction of Martyrdom – Catharsis (Where Gods Go to Die); sacred and profane meet in a melody that could very well enter the repertoire of Ordo Equitum Solis, in one of the most beautiful and accessible songs of this album.

The magic of Crown of the Clairvoyant

The magic continues with the piano notes of The Light That Shapes Us and an airy melody suggesting that the hermetic realization is approaching its luminous goal. Ted Tringo‘s piano convinces and excites us, and all the voices and instruments on the field follow in his wake. To crown this very singular and complex work comes the final Crown of the Clairvoyant. Strings, piano, and graceful singing give us the impression of walking on a flowery meadow while the wind of hermetic knowledge furrows our faces.

Closing words

The use of multiple musical languages put in place gives a particular charm to this work by Autumn Tears. Daring a comparison comes to mind, Flamma Flamma by Nicholas Lens, where the operatic, contemporary, and neoclassical language blended with ethnic elements that were difficult to combine but which produced a homogeneous and original result. Here perhaps we are not at those levels, but in any case, the gates are opened to the unknown, that musical unknown that combines sound and spirit to reach a perfect work carved in the millenary stone.

Questa recensione e’ una collaborazione con VeroRock.it. Puoi leggere qua la versione in Italiano.

Crown of the Clairvoyant is out now via The Circle Music, and can be streamed/purchased here.

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