Your search results:
| Artist: | Lykathea Aflame | Album: | Elvenefris |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year: | 2000 | Genre: | Metal, Progressive Rock |
|
Review:
|
It begins like Nile, but looser, lighter, yet equally savage when they want to be. The harmonies are richer, more erratic and diverse, and the opening of the first track builds in a snarl of complex sounds like the development of a symphony compressed into only a few tens of seconds. They sing like Orcs and like Lords of Light. That contrast is startling, it reminds me of Tolkein. Not the derivatives, but the real thing, where there is a sincerity that convinces me that there's substance here, not just a flat idea or a copy. I love Nile, but they tend to sound oppressive and I get the feeling they wouldn't sound anything like as good live as this lot would. The second track begins almost like New Order, and though it is definitely metal, the harmonies get the kind of aerial richness that metal rarely does. It's part harmony, part raw texture, and I think they must have put a lot into this to get so much control. That second track is like trolls from a Grimm's fairy tale, then opens out into a sound like a dark hall filled with people who haven't seen the light for a long time and have great need of it. There are effects or synthesizers here, and again, the weave into the fabric of the sound is both strong and subtle. Bringer of the Elvenfris Flame is the third, and is a radiant thing that raises hairs, it's so intense. It reminds me of Tolkein again, that ability to be genuinely moving rather than cloying and overwrought. This might actually be something they learned from Tolkein, as the focus is on narrative, they don't dwell on anything longer than they need to. It draws pictures in sound, leaving space for imagination to work on. They like lots of drums. Their bass hammers like machine gun fire. Their snare rattles like something military, or mediaeval, and they have cymbals and gongs and such, like things from oriental ceremony. They like strident fifths, and can weave them around like swordplay. Track four sounds as if it's depicting a ride into battle, which isn't a new thing for metal to do, but to be able to hear the ride after the assembling of arms, a ride that is half gallop, half flight, and then what sounds like the army falling on a horde of orcs, all done without obvious effects, all done in the harmony and the sounds of voices, is good stuff. It's like the strength of opera without trying to be opera. After the battle there's something they find, I don't know what, but it amazes them like elves amaze hobbits. Tracks five and six I've heard before, in isolation, and they still sound strong, maybe the centre of the work. The guitars have the same agile weight that Pissing Razors have, and the drumming isn't too far off either. :) Track six has something especially familiar to me, it opens with fifths on one chord like a hurdy gurdy and opens into a tune that is purely mediaeval, like something played by the Dufay Collective, or part of the fifth part of the Carmina Burana. This alternates with another theme no mediaeval player would have used, it's an odd modernistic mode that needs the 12 tone scale to get. I don't know how that might tie in with the track title 'On The Way Home', but it sounds like they're implying some differences in time as well as space. There are several Arabaic flourishes like Nile use, too, in this one. One of the strangest things is it's a very valedictory feeling, it sounds like the end of the set, but it certainly isn't that. Tracks seven and eight change the focus. For the first time there is a moment that sounds as if it narrates the events in the life of one person instead of a group, and the eighth track changes from narrative to focus on mood. There is a half-sung half-spoken part where the words are clearer than any so far, where the words instead of the music carry the meaning. As I'm not trying to follow the words, but the whole thing at one pass, I can only say that someone is going though a tough time and is getting what support they need to go on to what must come next. In track nine, the percussion is telling most of the tale, it changes from a steady urgency to erratic rhythms like Latin percussin at its edgiest, and back, and there are snare rolls like mediaeval calls to arms. It's not a battle though, but a journey made by one who must keep their strength. This doesn't move me the way the earlier stuff did, they are less immediate in their changes of narrtive now, but the changes are as interesting as ever when they come. The end of the track is an arrival. The tenth is like a thunderous ceremony. It's got horns and schaums sounding like something from dark days of an ancient empire. There are abstracted choirs of sounds that are not voices. It's majestic, like Belshazzar's Feast, and wild. There are words near the end, saying something of a mother and child, in the middle of the big event surrounding them, and clearly spoken at the end: "Let your steps be guided by the light." The final track is unusual, there are birds, and rich aery chords, and it doesn't work. The opening fits what went before, but the sound level is too high, too forced for the soundscape they're using. It needs more space, more dynamic range, to expand outwards and away like a view of the great garden it decribes. I think it fails like the block chords in Tangerine Dream's Tibet pieces, it's too unsubtle for a great depiction of a garden, and with ten minutes to run, that almost hurts. Apart from this, the effect of the journey is strong, and even now, I think players in metal seem too afraid of silence. It's either used to define an attack the way space defines the edge of a blade, or is just something that happens. This music does well in the narrative of events, but the pauses, fades, or momentary absences, that are defined by what else is happening, are not convincing. They have the control for doing it, so I don't know why it's missing. The harmonies are good though, even at the end. I like metal that is both cerebral and visceral, and this is plenty of both.  |
||
| Author: | Lostgallifreyan | Reviewed: | 30-09-2005 |
Click here to go to the search page.