Fall of Efrafa
Elil

It is the idea that takes precedence over the music. The desire to give meaning, to put one's musical destiny above a narrative arc. The Fall of Efrafa were this. An unavoidable and unquestionable end, not at all ruinous, simply intentional, because integrity for certain individuals, like Alex "CF" Bradshaw, comes first. Richard Adams and Watership Down are there, like an indelible mark, branding the path begun with "Owsla", the natural world and its protectors, and struggling under the weight of its own shoulders to reach the next chapter: Elil. The enemy. The fall of Efrafa must happen, the dictatorship, and the opiate oppression that squeezes and absorbs like a never-ending abyss not only the rabbits in the book but also those in society who are most at risk. The weak. Those who have no rights. The slavery of modern man, in short. Not that the metaphor only refers to them specifically; like an oil slick, the malaise spreads, seeps viscously, and imprisons, bringing to its knees. It causes suffering. Efrafa must collapse. It is no coincidence that the closure will be "Inlé": death. For us, the word "end" means the disintegration of all forms of totalitarianism, but the atrophied gaze turns with particular criticism towards religions and the blind, unconditional belief that shapes minds at its will. The air becomes suffocating and filled with suffering; someone needs to bring all this to light. There is a need for it.

This, referring to the "Fall of Efrafa", is one of those few occasions when you find yourself wanting to say and close the discussion with a simple: listen to them. Understand them, because, indeed, the bond between lyrics and music is, in this case, inseparable. Its allegorical power does not only flow into the group's sound but pierces all the conceptual sides that unite in the cold awareness that gradually forms about both physical and psychological tyranny. Many times the term "committed music" is overused, but here one does not want to overly romanticize or mythologize. They are artists who rarely happen, and it is only by gradually appreciating them that one can understand the amount of work, of life dedicated to such a project. It is a monolith with traits akin to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and it is not a gratuitous post-rock name thrown out there, trying to overcome its rigidity by embracing the rawness of crust from His Hero Is Gone, now dosed in a small part compared to "Owsla", but that knows how to leave its mark in its adrenaline-fueled self-destructive run. Elil is a heavy album. And no, it is not because it consists of 3 compositions of 20 minutes each that it is assembled in its entirety, but because the conceived musical landscape is dark and melancholically apocalyptic. It is being swallowed by jaws that feed on annihilation and massification. A sense of urgency emerges from desperate screams, without forgetting to balance ambient and folk reminiscences, with sound explosions that would make Neurosis proud. Recordings of bulletins and news that seem to come directly from an abandoned radio in a buried city, where graves deteriorate under acid rain. There was no one out there who sounded like them, the Fall of Efrafa were unique, capable of uniting a Machiavellian complexity made of post-hardcore with the bluntness of the hardcore punk world.

What remains are the solemn ups and downs and the hesitance that is by no means fragile, ready to give the altar to all the anger in Alex's body, the true mastermind of the Fall of Efrafa trilogy, as testimony of a failed morality in which ignorance and abuse must not prevail. In a sense, you wish the personal Odyssey forged on Adams' writing would never end, with those cadenced and sulfurous distortions that do nothing but drag you further down with them and melodies that appear grating in their deceptively quiet liberation. Slow arpeggios that transport towards death, in the most literal sense of the term, to fully discover what lies behind the veil of subjugation and deception: "Inlé". Perhaps I have written little about music when discussing "Elil", but I believe this is the best way to approach the universe of Bradshaw and his projects (Momentum, Light Bearer, Anopheli), because, in the end, just For El Ahraihrah To Cry is enough to explain everything, and the dense cloud never really dissipates, it immerses the Fall of Efrafa in its shroud forever.