(Darkwave, Goth Rock, Ethereal, Alternative/Indie) Mors Syphilitica - Feather And Fate - 2001, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

"The history of NY's Mors Syphilitica dates back to the goth scene of the mid-80's. Guitarist Eric Hammer and vocalist Lisa Houle first played together in Requiem In White, whose mix of dark, swirling sounds and operatic vocals won them a huge following. After moving to the Big Apple from Boston, they played shows with nationally known bands like Biohazard and Type-O Negative. Eric and Lisa, now married and sharing the same surname, formed Mors Syphilitica {two years ago}. Unlike other bands who rely on pre-programmed backing tracks, the group includes a live rhythm section, which helps them stand out among their peers. Lisa's vocal range can hit high C or dip into the bottom range. Not only does she have the pipes, but she knows how to use them creatively. The end result has drawn comparisons to Switchblade Symphony or Dead Can Dance, but Mors Syphilitica has their own thing going."
-Pittsburgh Press

Gushing with romance, Mors Syphilitica's third collection of songs remains loyal to the passion of their mid-80s Goth Rock roots (Lisa and Eric led the band Requiem in White), while blossoming forth with a spirit of reverie and lighthearted joy that infuses the album with a glowing light. Fear not! The happiness is like an image of a Pre-Raphaelite woman smelling a rose: music tumbles forth in a lush guitar symphony, with heavenly layers of vocals skipping carefree over whatever darkness lies beneath. Eric's passionate devotion to Mors Syphilitica shines through; in fact, he is so obsessed with its purity that he works in isolation, playing every instrument on FEATHER and FATE himself. "In the recording process," Eric comments, "the more I can whittle it down to where it's just a musical romance between my wife and I, the happier I am." Together, they take you on a heartfelt journey through a lush, dreamlike and enigmatic musical vision guided by stunningly beautiful vocals . . . and they embrace, desperately - as silent movie stars - in a golden, flickering light . . .
"I am awestruck by the new direction the band has taken. Far away but not entirely removed from the 80's influence they were born under, FEATHER and FATE combines a mature accessibility and originality whose closest relative would be the Cocteau Twins, Pink Opaque era. In place of heavy guitar sounds, Eric's sublime orchestration has taken on an ethereal dimension, providing a sweeter, more atmospheric backdrop to Lisa's powerful, layered vocals, whose range and strength have only continued to develop. Mors Syphilitica's two main elements (music and vocals) seem to have found each other on FEATHER and FATE and resolve in a new dynamic where they balance and complement each other. The result is a transporting new sound experience that most music fans have forgotten was possible." - Propaganda Magazine
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A review from All Music Guide:
4 Stars
If a group's going to start an album with a portentous metallic clang echoing into the distance, then said group had better live up to that beginning. Happily, Mors Syphilitica, the husband and wife duo of Lisa and Eric Hammer, does just that. Feather and Fate, the act's third album and first for the noted @Projekt label, occupies an impressive intersection point between dreamy post-punk / goth (think Cure and Cocteau Twins), a dab of shoegaze overload, and an air of mystic folk. Lisa Hammer handles all the vocals, doing a fine, evocative job (though sometimes her voice seems more hidden in the mix than it needs to be), while Eric tackles everything else. He's got a great ear for full arrangements, performing everything from sweeping orchestrations to dark, rolling bass lines with aplomb. Sometimes he smothers the songs where a more stripped down approach could work better -- "Glorious Breath," if it was just vocal and keyboards, would be astonishingly haunting -- but generally his ear for what's needed is spot on. The duo's secret weapon is their knack for infusing a musical approach often seen as enervating and inactive with an almost anthemic heft, yet without sounding overblown. Songs like "Naturally Cruel" and "Sins of the Dove" have just enough of the taste of the epic, surging choruses, building melodies, and more, as dramatic as they are mysterious. "Only a Whirlwind" is one of the best on those lines, with Eric adding a soaring guitar break on the choruses, charging up the quiet, minimal flow of the main song. Other songs of note: "Nostalgia's Sea," with a great overdubbed vocal from Lisa and a majestic keyboard arrangement to go with the central acoustic guitar melody, and the ringing piano chime of "Fountain of Tears." - Ned Raggett
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A review from Alternative Press #159:
Husband-and-wife duo create the first goth masterpiece of the 21st century | 8 out of 10 |
On their third outing as Mors Syphilitica, Eric and Lisa Hammer meld the ancient with the modern to deliver an album that is at once original and indebted to Cocteau Twins' The Pink Opague. Eric writes the songs and plays all the instruments, while Lisa provides vocals that equal the artistic dynamism and feminine allure of the Twins' Liz Fraser. Every track is a winning combination of multilayered songwriting and a gift presenting the mysteries of the distant past in an exquisitely contemporary package. With an album this good, imitation is a path to divine inspiration. - Mark Burbey
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A review from earpollution.com:
[#16]
The sepulchral influence of the Gothic is a distant pinprick of blackness beneath the lambent fire of the Hammers' music as they fuel their visions with elements of hopefulness. In "The Hues of Longing," spiritual emptiness is filled by the permanently ripening fruit of desire. The childlike innocence espoused by William Blake runs beneath the despair of "Only a Whirlwind." The delicate interplay of the mandolin beneath the soaring vocals of "Far from Loneliness." When they do turn towards the more bleak aspects of the tradition behind them, their approach--luminous and multi-hued--tends to obscure the darker subject matter. Feather and Fate is an arranged marriage between the darkness and the light, a seemingly incompatible union that survives and thrives because its polarities aren't its weaknesses, but its strengths.
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A review from High Bias:
Mors Syphilitica swirls. The New York-based duo spirals in, around and through its wind-kissed pictures of Gothic romance, as Lisa Hammer's shamanistic vocals slither in and out of her husband Eric's shimmering guitar figures. On the band's third album Feather and Fate, atmosphere is as important as melody, but not more so; Eric's tunesmithery always comes through the black lace and gauzy curtains. "The Hues of Longing" and "Glorious Breath" find darkly romantic hooks in riffs made from starlight and moonbeams, while "Fever Dream" manipulates its lush electric spirits to evoke its title. "Between Feather and Fate" uses a stark mandolin to propel it swiftly through the ether, while the banjo on "My Virgin Widows" calls up the ghost of Dock Boggs to reside in the house of digital delay. Short on earthy sensibility but long on poetic beauty, Feather and Fate is the sound of phantoms making love. - Michael Toland
For fans of: Cocteau Twins, Numeralia, Love Spirals Downwards
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A review from New Times LA:
In a consumer landscape where passionate commitment to one's muse is about as common as a confirmed appearance of stigmata, Mors Syphilitica seem to have sat themselves down with some clove cigarettes and a bottle of absinthe and really fleshed out their approach. What they ended up settling on involves bringing up the floor tom, backing off the hi-hat, leaning heavily on a mandolin and multitracking the chorus-laden guitars until they sound like an enormous, wistful music box tolling the bell grandly for thee. Vocalist Lisa Hammer harmonizes with herself up and down a minor scale with an onstage quality that's as cannily effective as it is affected, and the verses' long crawls to the chorus are so drawn-out that it's a huge rush of relief each time it arrives. Or try "Naturally Cruel," the album's second song, a willfully grand little nugget of propulsive drums and airy synth that evokes the sets of British '60s horror movies: A single guitar figure supports soaring pseudo-soprano melodies that, had they been sung by Peter Murphy for Bauhaus back in the mid '80s, would be classics now. It's spooky, and it's cool.
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A review from Newgrave magazine:
Feather and Fate, the third Mors Syphilitica release, provides fans with a body of work that is lush, soaring and beautiful. Each passing release seems to bring them closer to Godlike status and eradicates any notion that they could possibly be mere mortals. "Naturally Cruel" is an introspective tune; awash with swirling guitar and percussion that one could easily become mesmerized to. This is Eric's trademark sound that no one could possibly ever duplicate. Lisa's vocals start out in the lower range and in a fragment of a moment, soars as though to touch the sky, once again harmonizing in various octaves to leave the listener stunned.
"Galatea" starts as a shoe gazer reverie that carries the multi harmonies of Lisa's vocals through split channels. On the head set, this song just becomes more beautiful as each layer of vocalization pulls us into additional dimensions. Just when you think Lisa couldn't possibly have any more vocal ranges that she hasn't harmonized with, you are thrust even further. It is this song that now clinches Lisa Hammer as the Underground Musical Goddess; mark my words.
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A review from Outburn Magazine #16:
GOTHIC, ETHEREAL, FOLK ROCK: | 5 out of 5 |
Mors Syphilitica is the musical extension of husband and wife team Eric and Lisa Hammer. As with the group's previous releases, Feather and Fate evokes an ethereal, nearly anachronistic atmosphere, featuring mellow acoustic as well as effects driven guitars, melodic bass, mandolin, medium paced drum beats, and beautiful female vocals. These artists understand and utilize the dramatic potentials of both diminished quiet and crescendo strength in their sound, and integrate such disparate genres as opera, bluegrass, and gothic rock. "Between Feather and Fate" and the splendid "My Virgin Widows" represent folk bluegrass inspiration. "Glorious Breath" and "Far from Loneliness" exemplify ethereal influences. "Chains of Reason" is a neo-classical gothic waltz. Awesome tracks "Naturally Cruel" and "A Fever Dream" provide the most poignant, powerful moments on the album, with tribal drum lines and chill inducing harmonic developments. Relative to Mors Syphilitica's earlier recordings, Feather and Fate finds Lisa using more variety in her vocal style, with her gorgeous hallmark operatic voice alternating with a more traditional, though still beautiful, song vocal type. In general, the sentiment on this album is more joyful than on their earlier Primrose (which happens to be one of my favorite albums); many of the tracks on Feather and Fate are upbeat and in major keys. Nevertheless, it still manages to portray the emotional weight of the deepest of longing, the most passionate of romance, the most bittersweet of nostalgia, and the most poignant of joy. - Lara Haynes
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A review from shiny-objects.org:
While Projekt is continually introducing new bands to its roster, perhaps one of the finest recent additions to the label is the duo Mors Syphilitica. Using layers of melting guitars that meander between Cocteau-esque slumbers and rougher moodier waves of sound, Eric Hammer creates powerful backdrops of music to accompany Lisa Hammer's beautiful voice. With mutilayered vocals intertwining styles, she manages to sound both ethereal and acidic at once, her icy voice in one layer, her choir-esque voice in another. The result is enchanting.
The duo's latest endeavor keeps to their previous sound as heard on disks such as Primrose, but Feather and Fate is a sturdier work as a collective. The simple arrangement of instruments on each track is distinct enough for each song to stand easily by itself, making the album a strong listen from beginning to end. From the Swans-like crash which fades into gentleness on "The Hues of Longing," to the medieval grandeur of "My Virgin Widows," Eric's mix of gentle treatments to the goth rock sound and his sways of mandolin and keyboards, match the delicate airs of Lisa's singing.
A mix of warmth and coldness seeps through both the voices and the music. While songs easily fit the gothic genre with their melancholy airs, Eric's melting guitar compositions combed on waves of keyboards sound almost too pretty and delicate for gloom. You'll feel a twinge of sadness from songs, but not without cracking a smile as you listen. These are the kind of songs you use to drift into your imagination with, or wish you could fly with on a clear windy day.
Feather and Fate has an addictive and powerful sound, making it one of the best releases of 2001. It is a sign of an ever-strengthening duo who hopefully will continue to produce beautiful music for years to come. - Akane
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A review from The Sentimentalist:
Bathing in Harmony-Laden Bliss |
There is above all a certain lightness of spirit which separates this work from the band's previous two releases. Though the epic intensity is still there on songs such as "The Hues of Longing," "Naturally Cruel" and especially "Between Feather & Fate," many tracks offer a languorous, windswept feeling rather than the band's unleashed grandeur of yore. Gorgeously-layered harmonies abound, and there are indeed many fine turns of mandolin by Mr. Hammer. However, it is at times a little difficult to differentiate one song from the next in one series of tracks on the CD. We, the listeners, are left to luxuriate in a line of perfectly lovely tunes which bathe in the opaline light of purity and the possibility of a waking dream. With the exception of perhaps the delightful murder ballad "My Virgin Widows," the utter absence of cruelty beneath this CD's silken veneer is a welcome antidote to reality. Ahh, the romance is contagious. - MVW

Performer [Instruments] – Eric Hammer
Producer, Recorded By – Eric Hammer
Vocals – Lisa Hammer