Elend
Winds Devouring Men

"He saw the cities of many men and knew their customs... He suffered many hardships at sea trying to save his life and the return of his companions... But even so he did not save them, although he wished and wanted. They died for their own faults, the foolish... And the god took away their return."

Forgive me, I tell you right now. Forgive me if I will be vague. Forgive me because I will not spare words, I will not disdain to describe emotions in every aspect. It is a moment of confrontation. It's a challenge. I MUST do it. I may be guilty of egotism; but on the other hand, not doing it would mean committing an even greater sin. I could use many beautiful words, tossed around for decades to describe the beauty of a record, I don't know if you're aware of the various "For those who love real music," "For those who seek emotions in music," "Pure music, for connoisseurs," "A must-have..." No. The Elend do not love rhetoric. They deserve much more. This is because "Winds Devouring Men" is not music. It is a concept. It is desolation, it is solitude, it is an ultra-dimensional journey, an involvement not so much/only emotional in the strict sense as mental, conceptual, spiritual. An abyss without light: you have to scrape its bottom to decipher the dark side of life.

The Franco-Austrian Elend, from the duo Hasanoui/Tschirner (around which a lineup of various members rotates), are one of the most fascinating realities of neoclassical music of the new millennium. It is useless to spread comparisons with the much more famous Dead Can Dance, or Black Tape For A Blue Girl, removing guitar and drums, immersing refined chamber arrangements in an extremely dark, decadent and desolate gothic/symphonic perspective. The Elend have their own life. Too much, perhaps: theirs is not music for easy acceptance, it demands an extraordinary assimilation to be understood in its entirety, for what it truly is. Even opening the packaging, you can realize what awaits us. The cover, with its red/black chromatic ratio, reveals the shadow of a winged creature that seems to rise from the darkness. The inside is black: the dark photo of a field, with a phrase in Greek underneath, taken from the Odyssey. And the booklet is completely white: there is no separation of the songs. All the lyrics are lyrical parts of a single poem, written by the duo itself, interspersed with images of surreal tones. And inside the CD: black as pitch, black as the music it contains. Pure darkness.

The trilogy has been closed by the previous "The Umbersun". Now everything has changed. It's time for rebirth. The aggressiveness is just a memory: no more demonic orchestrations, triumphs of damned violins or screaming vocals. Introspection reigns supreme. It's the voice of Renauld Tschirner, a true narrator of oblivion... The noise that digs into the soul, the melody that tears the atmosphere apart, ancestral sounds that imprint desolation, where the listener gets lost, can no longer find the way, alone and abandoned, while industrial or symphonic chiaroscuros inject fear, terror. Like Odysseus in the middle of the sea, alone, betrayed by his companions. Or like the old sailor in Coleridge's wonderful ballad. Music that manages to manifest vision and dream: more unique than rare. In the end, this is precisely the concept on which the album is based: The "journey," the journey as a metaphor for life, the spiritual journey of the poet to find himself, amidst pure solitude.

What amazes the most about "Winds Devouring Men" is its constant confrontation with itself, its constant alternation of contrasting emotions, which makes it a complete work from every point of view, perhaps the best in the neoclassical field in recent years. The oneiric majesty of "The Poisonous Eye," in fact, contrasts the dramatic intimacy of "Worn Out With Dreams"; likewise, the sublime intertwining of violins in "Charis," which rises from a theatrical atmosphere, embraces the listener and caresses the ears, distancing itself from the apocalyptic scenarios of the complex "Under War-Broken Trees," where the piano and whisper instill fear, accompanied by infernal electronic percussions that sound like a stormy sea. Fear, however, that does not reach the levels of the instrumental "Winds Devouring Men": the title track, in fact, is a real nightmare, a malignant vision, where a carpet of desperate violins is tormented by harrowing industrial cacophonies that seem to come from the distorted mind of a psychopath. But one must not forget the mystical melody of "The Newborn Sailor," like the bell tolls in "The Plain Masks Of Daylight"... You arrive exhausted at "Silent Slumber: A God The Breeds Pestilence," the bonus track that stands out among the best gems of the disc, with a Natalie Barbary who tears through the darkness of the violins, a perfect light tracing the symphony of pain. "Winds Devouring Men" is a record that frightens, that eliminates all superficiality, that requires a "face to face". Courage is needed to face it. The same courage that Odysseus needed to face the sea, the same, although the journey here to be faced is different... So, before facing it, ask yourself if you are well prepared. It is very difficult to appreciate it at first listen, it requires complete assimilation. I myself had to study it thoroughly to write what I wrote. But if you can give it time, it will repay you: you won't be able to do without it. Oneiric as well as mysterious, fascinating as well as frightening.

Forgive me for the prolixity. Forgive me for everything. Until now this has been my most difficult review... But amidst all the music that is forced upon us day by day and that in the end gives us nothing, I believe that a committed listening is necessary... Allow me a final excerpt from the work:

"A l'affus des vents
Tapis sur la ligne d'horizon
Le timonier seul
La voilure vide l'espoire..."