With Zerschöpfung, third album of the darkwave project Vlimmer, Alexander Leonard proves to be a magician of infinite tricks. Having listened carefully and reviewed every album of the German musician since we first listen of him, I thought that in this new album I could not be surprised, but Alexander has pulled another ace out of his sleeve with this Zerschöpfung that, once again, has managed to flabbergast me. If you want to take the surprise home, you can choose between a nice CD edition, a special CD Box Set with six bonus tracks, a beautiful limited blue cassette and the less glamorous digital download.
“Losig” is the gloomy introduction that could be used in a horror movie. It plunges us into a world of darkness that links perfectly with “Flurfall”. It is a song in which Leonard’s vocal performance stands out, impregnated with pain, which is enhanced by the epic nature of the music and whose final chorus gives it a ghostly air. “Makks” reminds us of the joyful melancholy of The Cure, it sounds slightly eighties but the arrangements make it timeless. Although the beginning is light in comparison to the previous track, the composition becomes more and more weird at the end. In “Teerrit”, which follows in similar territories, we see Alexander more concerned with the composition than with surprising us with unexpected twists. It is the most cheerful track on the album and stands out for its beautiful keyboard melody.
“Platzwort” starts at full trot, with a haunting melody that conquers us at the height of the chorus. It has a great keyboard work as in the rest of the album. We already knew “Fatalideal” as it came out as a single and at the time we found it to be catchier than anything done before by Alexander Leonard with this project although, there still packed with dark moments, like that bridge full of mystery. “Todesangst”, on the other hand, is a long and gloomy track, like a dark version of shoegaze but sung with sweetness. Alexander leads you through his peculiar valley of tears in one of the best moments of the album. We end with another change of style that takes us to the more post punk grounds of “Austrochknung”
