Commemoration
Ophelia's Crown
Three
Dawn
Remember
Flight
The Beauty in All Things
Pandora's Womb
At a Distance
Eclipse

Four years after the release of the third Act from "The Love Poems for Dying Children" trilogy, Autumns Tears, one of the icons of Heavenly Voices / Neo Classical genre, is finally back with a New Opus, Eclipse. Was it a good thing? We can argue on that.

When I first heard they were working on new material, I got pretty excited (I had taken the project for dead until this news), and this time with contribution of new musicians such as Terran Olson (Maudlin of the Well / Kayo Dot), Greg Ball (Long Winters Stare) and Laurie Ann Haus (Rain Fell Within).

The album has real ups and downs, the new acoustic instruments (flute, clarinet, contrabass classical guitar etc) were more than welcome, but at the same time I felt a certain lack on the two things that had made the band notorious over the past years. The vocals and piano parts, are weak and uninspired, especially on the singing departments they commited two capital sins: never make a guy use falsetto, never please - and never ever use a female singer whose background is a Theatre of Tragedy / Tristania Etc clone. The main singer Erica was clearly not into it this time, (as a proof she already declared it to be her last performance with the group) her ever beautiful voice was rather inexpressive and ruined by the duets with Laurie nasal tones.

Tracks 4 and 5 ('Dawn' and 'Remember') are the shining parts of this album, if the whole was like this (no falsetto or cheap nasal voice, a bit more dense, inspired and expressive on the instruments) it would have been trully a wonderful album, but it isn't. Of course there are many other parts where it shines, it just didn't live up to expectations. Maybe I was just too spoiled by the latest of Elend and expected higher standards from others attempts on Neo Classical genres.

COG