Cold Walls and Apparitions

The all-grey cover of the debut album isn't too inviting and the song titles themselves tell of depressive moods and an unhealthy preoccupation with the blurry dark zones between the living and the dead. At least EB man Mutatis knows how to turn away the BM part-timers with just visuals alone as the music is a full-time preoccupation with its epic scale, dark Gothic visions and murky ambience, and the rich and deep tones of grand piano and electric guitars combined together in a space that suggests large empty chasms where sound travels far and reverberates with coldness.

Opening track "Celestial Mourning beneath a Forgotten Sky" is a gloomy piece right from the get-go with the spidery jewel-guitar meander: a dark mood settles over the piece instantly and never lifts as electric guitars and harsh noisy rhythms crash again and again like huge waves battering cliffs during a storm. While guitars glitter with sinister sparkle and trill away, harsh ghost vocals howl and rage in the background. There is great sadness as well as anger in the singing. A sense of urgent finality, a knowledge that this day might be your last day before death claims you forever, is ever-present. Melodies carry great despair and desperation in turns.

"Funeral Possession" is a strong if equally dark piece with dramatic riffing, background choirs and the occasional sparkling guitar solo that struggles against an all-enveloping blackness. As before, vocals express equal amounts of anger and anguish as slashing guitars emphasise the finality of death. This is quite a repetitive track in its later parts and the repeating riffs can be irritating as they don't add much intensity to the emotion of the song. This is followed by another relatively short track "Sleeping with Corpses ... Dreaming of the Dead" which consists of fragile solo grand piano melodies loosely joined in a slow, sorrowful dirge dance. Piano fades out and is replaced by spasmodic thumps of drum in a climate of lassitude and exhaustion.

The album's best moments come with the next two tracks "The Altar of Necromancy" and "Walking on the Winds of Sin" which have some memorable moments of dark compelling music. The music can be repetitive with some not very interesting riffing in parts but the tracks maintain momentum no matter that the guitar sometimes stops, there appears a pause or a break in the rhythms and blackness descends over the listener's concentration. "The Altar ..." features enough changes in key to bring in a sense of despondency at the soul's final resting place. " ... Winds of Sin" is a majestic piece of long, almost wistful synthesiser drone wash, rapid guitar riffing and flashes of lead guitar trill, cymbal-heavy percussion rhythms and wailing vocals. Unusually for this album and for much black metal, the vocals dominate and lead a big part of the track early on. Best moments come in the last three minutes with a distinctive marching rhythm marked by steely electric guitar and shouting voice, followed by an up-and-down bass riff loop and clapping metal percussion rhythms that shut down the track. The album finishes with "A Colder Wall", a dejected solo guitar piece which leaves us in no doubt as to where the lost soul, recently come into the world of the dead, finds its eternal home.

The concept is strong if morose and the music is highly expressive and very single-minded though some tracks (not necessarily the longer ones) can be a bit bloated and could have been edited for length and repetition. The music has a strong dramatic quality which Mutatis doesn't push very much though if he did he might have risked turning it into theatrical melodrama. (It sometimes pays to leave music a bit understated.) The sound quality is excellent and the tones of the guitars, grand piano and other keyboards are rich and sparkling, sharply edged and hard, sometimes decadent, and filled with melancholy; the black metal could include guitar noise showers to contrast the clear piano tones but that's a minor quibble on my part. The main weakness of the album and EB's style generally is that the often tinny drumming doesn't bolster the music and add power and majesty as it should and EB should consider getting a second person for skins duty for studio and (if so inclined) live work. Other than that, this debut is a strong start to what will hopefully be an illustrious career.

There has been some confusion over Elysian Blaze’s discography. For some time, many people assumed that ‘Beneath Silent Faces’ was the debut full-length by the Australian funeral doom metal band, but it isn’t. I myself admit to being slightly confused as to which piece of material was given the debut full-length status, but it finally seems that we’re all decided on ‘Cold Walls And Apparitions’, a haunting and horrid depiction of the ghouls that lurk into the might night hour. I’ve read numerous opinions on funeral doom and the general consensus is that it the least accessible sub-genre within metal. Strong words. This sub-genre certainly is a niche community, home to fans of the most extreme variations of metal. Unfortunately, such a -sub-genre truly is hard to get into. Like certain foods, this is an acquired taste, so be warned. Elysian Blaze, in particular, won’t suit the mainstream market, or even the typical doom fan, since they’re so wretched with black metal influences. So much so that the band are often stated to be a mixture of the two genres, black and doom, creating this niche genre, funeral doom. The black metal elements are easy to spot throughout, so there is no question as to which audience this will inevitably suit more so than any other - black metal fans. ‘The Altar of Necromancy’ and ‘Celestial Mourning Beneath a Forgotten Sky’ are the bleakest areas in which fans will find the most joy. These songs conjure the best emotions with the listener, the truest feelings and the hardest lessons to learn. The depiction of sadness, in the form of the overall content, is depressing and dangerous. The intoxicating guitars, with all the distorted melancholy, branch out like vines, wrapping themselves around the body of the listener and inhabiting their body for the duration of the record. This is a no-thrills sort of record that leans almost too far into melancholy. I find it strange that more people haven’t picked up on Elysian Blaze. I would have assumed that they would be one of the sub-genres leading candidates for band of the century, but no. Instead, bands like Ahab, who I find to be particularly dull, are leading the chasing pack by miles - including Elysian Blaze.

Ahab’s style of funeral doom has been described as the most accessible style within the market, therefore it should come as no surprise that they’re top dog and contenders to the throne. Bands like this obscure Australian act are noteworthy, but without distinction, in the eyes of the consumer. However, in my own humble opinion, Elysian Blaze are more than just pretenders to the throne, they have a real stake in the claim of world’s best funeral doom band, no exaggeration intended. Although this man one act don’t inhabit the most accessible style, being incredibly inaccessible at times, they do consist of one important aesthetic that bands like Ahab don’t - creative atmosphere. ‘Cold Walls And Apparitions’ is metaphorical in some senses. In perfectly gives a description of the music before first listen. The cold and dense atmosphere is intriguing and unstoppable alongside the creative imagery that this band invokes like spirits of the night, coming to devour our dreadfully sinful souls. There is a dark poetic feel to much of the music, of which the lyrics might be in-keeping with. Much like some of the best poetry would do, Elysian Blaze dissect the hardest forms of emotions that the human mind feels. The production is excellent. Its bleak, and although it doesn’t do much to exhibit the properties of the vocals much, it does highlight the sweeping symphonies of sadness well, and even gives bass an audible quality despite the dank and claustrophobic feel. Pulling them apart, piece by piece, and eventually unloading them on to the listener through symphonic styling and spectacular soundscapes which draw out the most negative emotions. The lyrical themes suggest that this Australian band enjoy conjuring up images of the night and sorrow, which makes sense when you have heard the dark desecration that is in the form of the giant soundscapes.

This multi-functional, all purpose atmospherically driven debut is downright grim. That’s right, grim. So-called fans of the underground have claimed for years that the spirit of the second wave will destroy all that follows on from it. That these notable second wave bands have already inhabited the darkest corners of the metal underground, so there is simply no point in anyone else ever trying to compete. Bands like Elysian Blaze are here, competing and conquering. ‘Cold Walls And Apparitions’ takes on an unusual style in order to dominate the darkest sections of underground metal. The record fuses styles together that most bands steer clear of altogether in fear of what they might create - the fast melodic soundscapes of black metal, mixed with ambient aspects and finally fused with the sorrowful nature of doom, which highlights the grief and pain in the soundscapes, forces this record into unusual territory. Songs like ‘The Altar of Necromancy’ muster up the best atmospheres in a fashion that typically sets the tone for this conjoined record and moulds the black metal elements with the associated genres (notably doom) together in order to make a perfect scenario for Elysian Blaze to work with. Surprises are at hand with this record. It doesn’t allow the deconstructed production to swallow the bass whole. Its sound is still fairly audible throughout, though the vocals are indecipherable and insanely portrayed, though still rather stereotypical. The vocals, in some ways, aren’t that important. The instrumentation and arrangement of songs is what counts here. The song writing, which is divinely depressive, allows an unexpected form of creativity to flow through the underground of the soundscapes. Although there is a slight feeling that some of the songs are too long, as they run into long passages of ambiance, the songs are rarely repetitive and even include some fantastic keyboard symphonies and organ sounding sections. Multi-layered and stylishly arranged, this record doesn’t give the listener room for too much criticism. Overall, this is a fine example of how to make funeral doom.

Funeral Doom. Black Funeral Doom to be precise. A lot of bands try to play it and a lot of bands try it in vain. Something is missing, something that is essential to the music though it is hardly nameable or recognizable what is missing or what the music is lacking of.

So what can be expected from Elysian Blaze on their album “Cold walls and apparitions”?

Ambient and Funeral doom parts can be heard. They fit together, follow another, are intertwined and try to create the special atmosphere which makes this subgenre special in its own way. Harsh voices croak like painful laments of imposed torture and monotonous drums reflect the sadness and emptiness of ones heart whose only hope might be seen in suicide; the only solution and salvation to the depressed heart. Sometimes fragments of sounds hover in the mist of surrounding hopelessness; the guitars and keyboards work sometimes fine together.
Such move the songs on and on. New riffs appear and so they drown the listener in the deep oceans of sorrow. Hope cannot be found in this music and escapes reveal the losses one has to suffer from even clearer.
But is this something essential to search in this genre? Are here elements combined in order to reach new levels of worshipping death?

Hardly.

The CD is not a bad one and has its moments, but most of the time the band does only one thing: bore to death. The slow parts as nice as they are made are rarely creating such an atmosphere as one wants to hear or feel. The music is either fast or slow, but often nothing in between. The ambient is nice, but not really grim and cold.

The attempts to transfer the aura of darkness into the music fail at the most of the time. Sadly or surprisingly the band has its best moments when the Black elements dominate the music and therefore are those who are fast combined with monotonous drums; which work fine here.

I really like Funeral Doom and the way the music is presented there, but on this CD there are a lot of weaknesses. Changing the slow parts but do much good to the album and using a drummer, too; it sounds like a drum machine. 70 points are OK I think.