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Rating:
I don't believe I'm a great reviewer, quite the opposite. I don't even know where the claim to review albums so emotionally loaded comes from, risking to diminish their poetry and qualities. Yet, I can't resist doing it. For this reason, after careful consideration, I have decided to share this pearl with a group of people –as many as possible- lovers of dark metal who may already know it, although it cannot be defined as metal. They themselves have coined the term Avantgarde Ambient (to put something in the ID3 tag of our MP3s...) but it's a forced, restrictive definition.
This album is born from the depths of the soul, to reach others. Don't expect to deal with a school-band-style symphonic-baroque-gaudy-obvious band. Elend reaches the pinnacle of poetry. We are dealing with true neoclassical music, well-arranged and extremely atmospheric. The sounds, the instruments blend to offer themes and soundscapes that are extremely dark, but not black metal (despite the growl, which I think sounds off; they must have realized it themselves. In the next album, it doesn’t appear) yet so gloomy and desolate. The female voices are full of emotions, and the lyrics imbued with a dark allure that is hard to describe. The male voices, however... sigh!
The lyrics mix biblical concepts with spectral premonitions, enriched by arcane revelations, just enough gothic. A large part of them is in Latin (partly drawing from chants like the Dies Irae) expertly mixed with English. Antienne, however, is in French. Honestly, I would have given more weight to French, as I saw it fitting the themes raised and the type of music.
I mentioned earlier that we are dealing with religious lyrics as well. Yet don't expect any blasphemies like Cradle of Filth or similar awfulness (for those who don't know, I hate Cradle!). So approach this album without worries.
I will never be able to describe what the album makes you feel. I can only recommend purchasing it. Not even samples would help, because these compositions (not songs) must be listened to in their entirety.
The title track, which closes the album, is simply a masterpiece (not that the rest is any less). Emotionally piercing to the extreme is the piano that opens this final composition, which ends as it began: with delicate notes of pure poetry.
I repeat, I'm sorry to have harbored the claim to review an album of this kind, but I couldn't resist. I apologize if I've got something wrong.
If you want, insult me as much as you like. I deserve it. But listen to the album!
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
02 Ethereal Journeys (14:29)
''Vaste oceane stellate, virgo omnis malefici,
Est hospes mirus se mergens in sinum tuum.
Creaturam tuam custodi, tempestate ignem arce,
Quem non restinguere potes.
Venit Lucifer!
Venit angelus mortis!''
Luciferian Revolution!
Far beyond the sky,
Far beneath the heavens,
Where once before I died,
To perpetuate my hymen...
...with a star...
Heading for the open sky... where the flames never dared to come...
The rays of the moon linking the spheres... the molochian comets...
During my ethereal journeys,
With celestial glory and pride,
I will celebrate the day
When you become my bride.
To rape the shining stars in the secrets of the dying light.
The starred delights will enrapture my soul to insanity.
Rapturous elevation frightening the God of Light.
I tear the flowers of the sky,
The firmaments of stars embosomed in His Creation,
But the starlit ocean will not quench my thirst for their glowing nectar:
I drained the wine of a thousand suns.
''Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,
Dominus deus sabaoth,
Pleni sunt caelum et terra gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.''
You are the light, I am the flame,
The freezing blow of my thoughts unburns me
And I am dying but cannot die.
The divine has deserted the altar
Where your pain is multuplied in the prism
Of my lust witnessed by the stars.
The delight burns at its paroxism.
To rape the shining stars in the secrets of the dying light.
The starred delights will enrapture my soul to insanity.
Rapturous elevation frightening the God of Light.
I was made the Morningstar,
Embowered from the night...
God of Lie, I am the Prince of Darkness, the Star of Mourning
Hunting the light of salvation.
''O Domine,
Dona nobis vim, ut eum oppugnemus.
In nos luminem perpetuum fundi iube.''
You took the fire in my eyes
When I was starving of light.
You take delights in my cries
For I am dying but cannot die.
While entrusting the flame to a celestial abyss,
I will get drunk of screaming and of pain,
And the silence and the night will move at last unto me.
Far beyond the sky,
Far beneath the heavens
Where once before I died,
To perpetuate my hymen...
With a star!
03 The Luciferian Revolution (10:57)
Flores solis, ardentes in aeternum,
Ne secuti sitis fatum floris venenati...
Colores delectant, inebriant odores,
At siccatur sinus perpetuo lacrimando...
Nam angeli cursus firmamentum
lacrimarum...
I depart from this world of grey
to reach the red eternal.
Red, the scarlet letters burn within my mind:
We won't follow the Sun in its course.
We will follow the Moon in its curse.
Lacerate the heavens, devour the Sun,
rape the light.
We are waiting for an eternal night
Where to keep Heaven's tears away from the
eyes of the sun,
Cast away from your universe of warmth,
of love and shelter,
The path of the angel is a firmament of tears.
Luxuries of pain, lurid agony,
The universe echoes the scream
Of a soul overflowed with sorrow.
Exhausted, let me drown in your eyes!
Shatter the stars, drag out the ligth
And drown it in the deepest seas of my mind;
I need no more brightness:
I am the night and the shadows.
I am the field when pain is the seed.
Flores noctis sumus atque alas pandimus
In profundis tenebrarum
Solus halitus emanans penna speculae,
Quam expellit folium mortis.
Shatter the stars, drag out the ligth
And drown it in the deepest seas of my mind;
I need no more brightness:
I am the night and the shadows.
I am the field when darkness is the seed.
The golden pandaemonic silence soothes me
As the streams of my satufied thoughts draw
the pattern of my kingdom,
Imperium infernale.
But we will regain the paradise
For in the east of Eden,
I will shed the blood of Christ...
04 Eden (The Angel in the Garden) (04:17)
Horror atque terror
Quid faciebas, malefice
Die irae, dies ille
Sovet saeculum in favillam.
Lost in the garden,
with the blood on my hands,
Captive of the luminous trees,
Of wisdom and of life
the Holy Keepers,
My face unmasked, monstrous, bloodred,
Is shining through the emerald light.
Numquam diruetur templum
adamantinum
Nos, qui olim vicimus,
vincemus te iternum.
I eat the deadly flowers
of murderous lust,
And begin to chant my freedom.
Musical death, of Heaven the dirge.
The Universe I master,
I make mine the burning delights of life,
The joy of power unbounded,
Eternal Fury of celestial destruction...
Lucifer, damnatus es, pro ea,
quae faciebas.
Persequemur te,
iterum perdemus te,
Inferna dulcius perfugium
Quam vorago cruciatuum,
In quam te praecipitabimus.
Non est dominus noster,
nihil potest.
God is dead
God is dead
God is dead
As I tore the shreds
of this morbid dream,
I abandoned my heart,
And on the silent ocean of my soul,
The waters were so calm
one could hear the dying of light.
07 Dancing Under the Closed Eyes of Paradise (09:36)
SOPOR AETERNUS...
O mortis secretum, ubi finis nervorum?
O funeris algor, ubi sonus somniorum?
The insane wine of the night misled my soul
At the confluence of dream and of pain...
We dance under the closed eyes of paradise,
And our eyes tear the insane space
of the light.
Saltemus sub oculis coniventibus paradisi!
The voilence of the winter moon
spreads a mantle
Of cold icy pain over my petrified landscape.
Seized by the freezing frosts
of the diabolic winter,
Our hearts breathe the winds of sadness.
Saliamus, saliamus aeterno,
Saltemus, saltatum mortis!
Saliamus, saliamus!
But what is in my heart can only be read
by the winds
That gathered my words of pain.
The veil of the nigth falls at your feet
Revealing the views of the fiery sky.
Kyrie eleison.
The gentle sapphirian night wrapped me
in its maternal warmth
And her hair, studded with stars,
had a scent of sensuality
As I lay embraced in her sweet caress.
How tender is the nigth
in her amorous delights.
Where are the flowers I gave you, my love?
The amaranth, the rose and the lily.
Buried within the glacial vault
of my thoughts,
Take from me this fading breath,
Enfold me in your veil of darkness
To celebrate the reign of black eternal night.
And in the snows, glittering
in the cold fragile moonlight,
Appeared the incandescent flowers...
The blood of angels,
Said one of our round.
"Our blood".
We dance...
...and the blowing of the winds is
our only music,
We dance.
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