Beneath Silent Faces

Elysian Blaze has reached great heights, with its latest LP Blood Geometry; however, this end product was not out of nowhere and the project has progressively moved towards this most recent end from its beginnings in a logical and considered manner. Beneath Silent Faces is the second demo from Elysian Blaze and - courtesy of the CD re-releases (that include a bonus track) - is the most accessible early material available.

The production of this demo is incredibly harsh and there is an immediate comparison to Xasthur, subsequently. The tempo meanders (and more sparingly jolts) between a dank claustrophobia and frosty tundra, which has become a trademark of this general style of black metal but an anchor point of Elysian Blaze. These shifts feature consistently and synthesise an oppressive and unsettling atmosphere, exacerbated by cacophonous drums that pound unrelentingly and persist at the forefront of the mix (as in The Thorned Tongue of Requiem). Brief interludes dress Beneath Silent Faces with an aloofness and these drag the music towards mournful solitude, under the scorning gaze of melancholia; elsewhere, the guitars tear without restraint through any semblance of innocent grace that may otherwise have adorned the soundscape, in an unrelenting conspiracy with the drums. Vocals are used sparingly, instead providing the aforementioned instruments with the lead - where vocals are utilised, they are positioned in the beckoning distance out of reach but for the earthly torment that restrains them to the soil Elysian Blaze has unceremoniously tilled. The result is a malodorous and infertile womb splayed across any semblance of life that smothers any potential for regeneration.

In Beneath Silent Faces, Elysian Blaze has thus produced a demo - in time made more available to a wider audience - deserving of significant praise, if not principally for the relevant rank and unpleasant atmosphere oozing from the cassette reel or compact disk then for the genuine delivery from a tormented mind. Here, the music will not forgive, and it will serve as a lead weight that sinks one to catatonic and introspective abandon.

I am pretty familiar with E.B. and this demo has a special place in with the rest of the discography. It really does sound nothing like any other material, which is actually kind of nice, in it's own way. This album perhaps has a special aura to it because of shitty recording equipment, or maybe this is the way that he wanted it to sound. This album has such a dreamy feel to it, I really love that.

The recording is really quite terrible. Quite frankly, I'm sure Mutatiis was hoping for something a little more terrible, and evil sounding, but this recording actually makes it sound soft. The guitars are very quiet, with almost no distortion, and sound very clean. They are farther back in the mix than the synthesizer, and is quite overpowered by it. The drums are very difficult to hear, and basically provide a baseline beat, with nothing else to offer. Mainly all you hear is cymbals, and those are quite minimal to boot. Vocally, there is very litte substance to it; it is very soft, and almost a whisper. Coupled with the way the demo was recorded, and how it ended up, this actually plays more toward the overall sound of the album, instead of detracting from it because the vocal style sounds out of place.

The most grandiose portion of this entire recording, is the synthesizer. Wow, does he really outdo himself on this aspect. They are thick, swirling atmospheric brilliance, and overlay very nicely, and powerfully over the rest of the instruments and vocals. It is the most powerful part, and reminds me of a well-recorded Paysage d'Hiver album (minus the fuzz), such as Die Festung, and the frosty feel that the piano, and orchestral passages exhude just bolster this album immensely. There is nothing overdone with regards to this aspect, despite it's being the most prolific part of the band at this point...Everything else in the band just beefs up the beautiful keyboard passages in my opinion, and takes second tier.

Overall, it is a nice album. A detached, desolate, and ethereal release; and DEFINITELY nothing like his other material. Nonetheless, this black sheep has it's own charm, and is definitely worth getting to round out this wonderful artist's discography.

Beneath Silent Faces is the second demo released by Australian black/funeral doom metal act Elysian Blaze, before the band kicked off with the full-lengths 'Cold Walls and Apparitions' and the brilliant 'Levitating the Carnal'. This demo showcases Elysian Blaze minus the focus and polish found on later releases, most notably the aforementioned 'Levitating the Carnal'.

As far as I can discern, there are no funeral doom elements whatsoever, just depressive black metal. The music on here lacks the aged, majestic atmosphere that the band later succeeds in producing. This is because the demo is basically the sum of it's parts; all it is are the instruments that make the music up. This is mainly due to production (or lack thereof). Compared to 'Levitating the Carnal', this album is pretty clear and reverb free, and just a little too 'clean'; there isn't that murkiness aided by the reverb that gave the following albums that flow and cohesion between instruments and vocals. For instance, whenever one of the mechanical, tinny blast-beat sections start, the vocals don't fit, they just tend to float over the drums and sound completely out of time with the prominent percussion work.

My main problem with the demo is that it is a little too repetitive. So was LTC, but the repetition was a lot more smoothly done and endurable. And when the songs vary to a different section, they do so in awkward jumps rather than smooth transitions. As usual, the guitars are ambient backdrops, though there are a lot more coherent riffs that on LTC (for example the main riff on the title track) and synths aren't usually as prominent. There are some decent riffs, but due to poor recording/production, a lot of the time they just sound very synth-like and tend to bounce up and down pointlessly. Drums are pretty much composed of cymbals and snares. this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Take for example, 'Anvil Chorus': the song begins with some thundery guitars, then the ominous synths kick in with the cymbals being in a very hypnotic CRASH-tap-tap-tap pattern, followed by the simple piano tinkling which, like in LTC, are very useful in conveying the atmosphere intended by the band. The blast beats, which are quite common in black metal, sound out of place with the aesthetic of the music; kind of like an oncoming train or a washing machine. Vocals are quite terrible. They are far too high pitched and distant, and due to a crappy mic, usually crack and clip whenever the vocals build up to a loud howl or shriek. Most songs just seem to be written for the sake of writing a song. As I've mentioned before, the repetitiveness still present on later albums used here is far too noticeable. I can see that a kind of hypnotic atmosphere was intended, but again, the terrible clarity and poorness of the production really screw that up. The best and most thought-through songs here are 'Anvil Chorus' and the title track. The former uses sweeping synths and clean, ambient guitar work and the previously mentioned hypnotic cymbal-snare pattern throughout the song, really creating the hypnotic atmosphere initially intended. The latter builds up with a slow, almost bluesy riff, followed by a drum pattern similar to 'Anvil Chorus', then after a short ambient interlude the drums go into a more lively version of the pattern mentioned on the opening track, varying between vocals and drum patterns/speeds. Both tracks make the demo worthwhile and have enough variation to redeem the rest of the demo, thankfully.

Don't be put off Elysian Blaze because of this review; this is Elysian Blaze trying to find it's sound, and the formula used on this demo is used more effectively in the albums to follow. I've been mentioning 'Levitating the Carnal' a lot throughout this review, because of the contrast between them. The repetitiveness is pretty much the same, but the improvement concerning everything, from the songwriting to the production, is amazing considering it's only been two years between the release of this demo and the excellent 2006 full-length. If anything, this demo is worth a listen just to hear the contrast, differences and similarities between it and 'Levitating the Carnal'.

So far I've only heard Elysian Blaze's second album "Levitating the Carnal" which has a stupendous and deep sound so this reissue by Asphyxiate Recordings of an early demo plus a bonus track has some curiosity value for me with respect to the development of that distinctive sound and EB's particular style of funereal doom BM. The original demo tracks show that EB already had the deep and bombastic sound and the style down pat but was still in the process of developing a more subtle and atmosphere-laden approach to the music. The tracks on "Beneath Silent Faces" are at once raw and rich (a very striking combination) but without the more refined atmospheric effects, these can come across as very bludgeoning because of the slow and sometimes monotonous percussion.

The tracks can be quite meaty affairs even when they are not long, they seem to pack in a lot in the way of riffs, melodies, tempos and sometimes abrupt changes in the direction of the music. What singing there is by Mutatiis (and there isn't a lot of it) is very distant, dry and croaky, and often very anguished. The croakiness is similar to how Malefic from the USBM act Xasthur sounds but Mutatiis expresses more genuine emotion and sadness here. Grand piano melodies with just a hint of echo are an important part of EB's style and give the music an almost luxuriant and complex sound full of emotions too deep and overwhelming to describe and an almost operatic grandeur. On some of the early tracks where there are guitar melodies, the guitar tones themselves even have a grand feel about them and you could drag in that guy Brian May who used to play lead guitar in Queen to lay down a few melodies here and there on his instrument (provided the man doesn't go off on one of his boring solos), and they would all fit in quite well on the songs.

Best pieces here are "Anvil Chorus", a beautiful and mournful song which is EB at its rawest and features quite a few very impressive lead guitar melodies with that wonderful metallic, almost ringing tone; and "A Constellation of Souls" which is a short raw bluesy guitar piece. "The Thorned Tongue of Requiem" is also a good track with some very haunting and melancholy passages of music. Other tracks, like the title track, can be pretty good too but there is a lot of very long ponderous drumming throughout the music which seems to detract from the emotions expressed in the singing and the guitar and piano melodies. The rhythms can draw out the songs into something really long and almost tedious. Possibly a mixture of slow doomy drumming and much faster BM-style rhythms might have worked better on some of the songs but it's hard to say - fast rhythms could also have the same effect on the mood of the music and add aggressive elements which Mutatiis may not want.

The bonus track "Despair" is a laborious song with fairly ponderous rhythms (they do change throughout the track), passages of solemn synthesised orchestral music and subdued minimal rhythm guitar so apart from the agonised singing and some lovely piano tunes at the end, there isn't much to commend this song.

The earlier tracks are better than the later ones: the early pieces have some good lead guitar which offsets the slow and sometimes plodding rhythms. Though the CD is only 50 minutes long, it seems a lot longer so perhaps it's best digested in chunks rather than all at once. Usually when I review albums, I'll listen to the whole thing in one go to see how it all jells together - sometimes albums have to be appreciated as whole works in themselves - and though I think the intention is for the CD to be heard as one whole work, the songs are independent enough of each other to be heard separately. I recommend this reissue only if you are very interested in EB's work and want to know how its sound and style have developed.

I first heard of Elysian Blaze on the Australian Black Metal compilation album "Pestilentia Australis" and was quite impressed with what I heard, as well with the rest of the many bands on the compilation. So, I set out in a venture to discover these bands and into the superb Australian Black Metal scene.

Beneath Silent Faces is the first material I've got to hear from the one man band and the production is actually quite well. It's full of reverb that actually helps the atmosphere of the music and gives it a much darker mood. The guitars seem like they're being played deep within an ancient catacomb and the bass is rumbly and doomish. The drumming is another thing I should mention; the blast beats on the demo (and on the following album as well) sound like an oncoming train, or a drying machine going fast. Now don't think this is a bad thing, for I think this fits the music well and gives it a dark industrial sound. There are some keyboards, though they're mixed well with the rest of the instruments and aren't cheesy what so ever. For the vocals, they're not anything new or great, and they're mixed into the background but again, they fit well with the music and it sounds like a twisted being screaming within that ancient catacomb I mentured before.

The opening song, "Anvil Chorus", immediately pulls you deep into that catacomb for this demo has an extremely dark, gloomy, and depressing atmosphere. It won't stop until the demo is over with and it'll only leave you wanting to hear more. To simply label Elysian Blaze as a Black Metal band would be a mistake, for the music is very much it's own thing. There are of course many characteristics of Black Metal (tremelo riffs, blast beats, shrieked vocals) here but there is also hints of Doom as well, with the slow drumming, long and stretched out guitar riff, and the overall dark mood of the album. So there are as many slow parts as there is fast here.

This is an amazing demo with an extremely dark and gloomy atmosphere which shouldn't be missed by fans of dark, suicidal Black Metal and Doom Metal. You won't regret listening to this. Elysian Blaze is surely one of the better Black Metal bands of today and I eagerly await what Mutatiis has to offer in the future.