Band:	Antichrisis
Album:	A Legacy Of Love
Style:	Folk metal, Gothic metal
Release date:	1998
Guest review by:	Otherwheres

01. How Can I Live On Top Of The Mountain?
02. Nightswan
03. Trying Not To Breathe
04. Baleias Bailando
05. Dancing In The Midnight Sun
06. Planet Kyrah
07. The Sea
08. Our Last Show
09. Forever I Ride
10. The Farewell

Well, this is my first review and I sincerely don't know if I may write another one too...Time will tell. Antichrisis is a German band not very popular among metalstomers, but one of my favourites. With this album I use to paint my moods in the warm colours of both sadness and joyous, I imagine a landscape, I live a dream and seal my thoughts with its end...
"A Legacy Of Love" is their second full-length,recordedin 1998 and one of the year's greatest. In times when creative, inovative (so...originality) are less appreciated and less found especially through melodic bands, Antichrisis has managed to do a great album, entangling the old calm atmosphere of '70s rock with the darkened feeling of metal. As genre, this record can be labelled as doom-gothic-folk, even though according to Sid (the leader), they do not play strictly metal,it is just an influence.

The album is a beautiful journey, from a top of a mountain to the sea depths, also they included in their universe Andromeda and Planet Kyrah - a fulfilled legacy between love and nature. Also romantic but, just like in life, the happiness of having beside you the one beloved ends into the arms of a bitter farewell - "A Legacy Of Love" is then the story which soon vanishes just like "trails of smoke on a midsummer's night", leaving an ashen soul...
With a progressive touch, this album creates an atmosphere of both entertaining(linking yourself to the positive side of music), but also guide you to your inner feelings, sadness and hopelessness, thinking of past, of present, of what it will be...it's about two dimensions of music that rarely can be found in a single record...
The instrumental is emphasized with Celtic accents, in fact this is the major influence of Antichrisis music. Different from the previous acts composed and played only by Sid, for "ALoL" were invited four new members, assuring the complexity of music - new instruments, such as flute, mandolin, pipes, whistle completed his work..
After the first track, "How can I live on top of a mountain", a folk-instrumental intro, the album continues with "Nightswan", when we have a first meeting with Lisa's brilliant voice. Acoustic guitars accompany the Celtic rhythm. The third, "Trying Not To Breathe" has a different musical structure and idea. A highly depressive song; listening to it, all hopes and desires break down, I'd say tragically. Folk is left apart for around ten minutes of terribly sadness, in a doom-gothic act...
"I'm trying not to breathe!/And so I'll leave this world behind" It is sung by Sid and it ends with a great duet with Lisa...that is the main mark of the following track too, "Baleias Bailando", closed to "Nightswan", but more folk orientated. This song was initial recorded on "Cantara Anachoreta", their first full-length and modified to harmonize with this opus' atmosphere; I enjoy more this acoustic/Celtic version. Even though the lines aren't "encouraging" , listening these while drinking a bear with some friends, music cheers you all...
"Dancing In The Midnight Sun" is another sad doom-gothic act, a bit progressive influenced, with a "farewell, pretty one" lyrical idea. After around five minutes, the song changes its musical line, for a folkish part and it ends the way it started...Cyclicity is an a tribute for most of the songs.
"The Sea" is the longest and the most varied song. It has a crescendo intro, a very interesting instrumental, turning from doom-folk to gothic fineness and the vocals are quite grave.
"Our Last Show"...and here it comes my favourite track.. Lisa's voice had never been so worm and caressing as it is for this song.
"I know I'm gonna lose you/How can I face another daylight?" In the middle of this act, there's the most interesting guitar solo of the album. I'm always imagining a sad Juliet in a room, late at night, staring the lights' playing of two candles...
"Forever I Ride", an amazing song, maybe the most entertaining. It changes its musical line for more than four times (variety, a mark of the correspondence between instrumental and lyrics) and, in the end, Sid even growls..
"Hekate arise!/ Bring back the love of my life!". The whistle is such brilliant, as listening you feel like blowing with the wind? A very powerful song.
The album ends with "The Farewell" - almost mournful and very melancholic, so the last line, "Ich liebe dich fur immer", the only one in German, means a simple epitaph for both a dream...and an album. With this last song, Sid & co. created a kind of epitome, most of the lines being "extracted" from the lyrical body of the other tracks. A journey's end...

Emotion and mystery, love and breaking up, this mean A Legacy Of Love, an album out of every musical stereotypes and clichés?

Thank you for reading these lines,
"and if thou wilt, remember,
"and if thou wilt, forget."