Moons and Mushrooms is already the seventh full length album of the Swedes who go by the name Lake of Tears. I never heard of them before and since the psychedelic name of the record quite attracted me I decided to check out whether I missed something the past 13 years.

 

Opening track ‘Last Purple Sky’ starts promising with a good rocking doom riff, but when the vocals of Daniel Brennare come in I can’t help to chuckle at his whining vocals which sing some very lame lyrics. Luckily he let us hear in the same song that he can also sing very strong, much like Nick Holmes of Paradise Lost. In the same song also a good slow solo comes by where after the awesome rocking chorus takes over again.

 

Unfortunately the lameness of which I spoke comes back in the following songs, like in ‘Island Earth’ where some really awful keyboard notes are repeated which almost give it a poppy feeling or something. What a shame, because in fact they know how to do it right, like ‘You Better Breathe While There’s Still Time’ just got that nice dark rocking riff over which a fine catchy melody is played. Though it must be said that Lake of Tears never really stunningly surprises.

 

Overall there are certainly aspects about this record which I really liked, but there are too many annoying lame elements which caused me not to listen with pleasure for too long to this record. When you add up that their strong points aren’t really special, one will probably pretty quickly leave this record untouched in his CD collection.