Welcome to the Victorian era. This wicked part of British history can be relived again through the music of Eibon La Furies. It was the era of Jack the Ripper, Charles Darwin fucking religions with "On the Origin of Species", wars (The Crimean War, The Second Boer War etc.), The Irish famine and Aleister Crowley among other things... The band's sophomore full length album is about "be your own compass, worship no one, bow to none - believe in your own convictions," as the frontman Paul D. "Lord Eibon" Sims has commented.

Eibon La Furies have created an album, that is a very protean one, but also very British in its entirety. The band have managed to carve their one kind of a niche, but they owe a lot to some of their countrymates. The music of ELF varies from raw and simplistic delivery to more progressive or theatrical exhibitions, say, like Venom meeting Bal-Sagoth meeting The Meads Of Asphodel.

Many of the guitar riffs are about black metal, gothic or heavy metal. The guitar tones are rather dry and on the thin side. I wouldn't mind if they sounded more sturdy, because now they are overpowered by louder and heavier elements (read: the bass drums). 'Immoral Compass to the World' contains some neoclassical elements in its guitars. 'Flames 1918 (A Song for the Silence)' is a gothic ballad, which manages to be both melancholic and beautiful. While the intro already introduces the non-distorted guitar, this song is where it really takes a bigger role. However, the non-distorted stuff plays a big role during the whole album. Occult/gothic rock is another part of ELF. Pink Floyd-ish guitar licks step out on 'An Enigma of Space and Time'. This one must be mentioned: There are some guitar parts on 'Imperial Jackal's Head', that probably loans from "Battlestar Galactica" theme! Damn, It made me laugh, but in a good way. The lead guitar work and solos are often very vivid.

One of the trademarks of an ELF song is peculiarity. Sometimes those twists they throw at a listener are real curveballs, but sadly they do not hit home every time. While the album has many sides to it, it feels a tad too long in its 52 minutes of duration. I've said this times before, and will repeat it here: As I got a promo version, and the lyrics aren't included, maybe that's why some of the songs aren't easily comprehended. The artwork is rather good mixture of old and new styles, depicting the lyrical themes. The album has proved to be one of those which opens itself quite slowly, but that isn't a surprise considering the compositions' essential nature. There are so many tiny or big details to be discovered on this album.

Even with this lacking production that the album has (more of this later), the band can conjure up moods. These include mysteriousness, courage (and sometimes it's reckless), sadness, extraordinariness and ghastliness. The synthesizers vary from spacey atmospheres to horror organs, and from a piano to... Well, there are so many things on the album the instrument is utilized for. The vocals are equally versatile. There are more extreme sides to, as raspy and nasty black metal styles change into death metal grunts and growls. Many kind of clean vocals vary from bold to whispered. And one style reminds me of ex-Sentenced vocalist Taneli Jarva. Operatic female vocals are present in many of the songs (oh-ohs and choirs among others), but there are more extravagant ones too, e.g. witchy chanting.

The bass guitar has its time on spotlight, but has an unfortunate, significantly smaller part than anything else here. It just feels like it was absent for a lot of time. The album's production work is a big demerit to it. Loud kick drums plus generally heavily triggered drums sound very much like a drum machine at times, and this is the production job's second bad defect. While there are quite a lot of elements at some points, it never raises to be grandiloquent, which clearly was the band's goal. To tell the truth, it ends up sounding cheap, due to the bad work at mixing table.

ELF have managed to make music, that sounds like them, even though I hear many bands in their songs. With aforementioned British bands, there are moments akin to Anathema, Septic Flesh, Moonspell, Tiamat and so much more. ELF today is nothing as gritty as some of their older material, but they've taken the right road. Some of this hits immediately, some will open with time given, and some still feel frail after many a spin. Definitely worth a try if the aforementioned bands stir your cerebrum and cerebellum.

Rating: 7+ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/21/2014 18:44