Review in Ennui Mag

The first thing that comes to my mind concerning Elend is that they are meant for night hours, and night hours only. There is a very particular quality in their music that makes the idea of listening to them during daylight absurd. It is about loneliness, and mortality, and the deepest melancholy of human nature. Music for the small hours then, when all friends are sleeping or away, and the heart itself yearns for things hidden and inarticulate. This is not a metal band, and this should serve both as warning and invitation. I look at the last page of the exquisitely created booklet: violin, viola, trumpet, synth, industrial noises and two sopranos are some of the main ingredients of a musical landscape so melancholic, dreamy and unique that deserves the attention of any lover of music. This is their fifth album, and their sound is very different than what we had been used to until now. Their previous album, The Umbersun, was the closing chapter in a succession of three albums concerning the rebellion of Lucifer in Heaven, the Fall and the Apocalypse. The Umbersun was a possible soundtrack for Dante's Hell, with a storm of classical instruments assaulting the listener in a manner that could only be described as intimidating, the female choir similar in intensity and dark sweetness with the tortured souls in the blackest pits and the male vocalists blending screams and whispers with the sopranos. Not surprisingly, this album could be the calm after the storm. The pace is slow, almost painfully so, a funeral march for the hopes and a wake of all delusions, the participation of the female sopranos is reduced to a minimum and the male vocalists hold the reigns of the journey. Being the avid lover of female vocals that I am, I only wished that the two sopranos participated more in this album. The tradition of the disturbingly poetic, metaphoric and occult-related lyrics is not broken, something that can be presumed by reading the titles only: "away from barren stars", "a staggering moon", "silent slumber: a god that breeds pestilence". According to the two composers, the theme is an esoteric quest, through trials and tribulations, with similarities to such myths as Odyssey. There are very few fierce outbursts in the deep, mournful melodies, the heart is obliged to follow, "vision is all that matters". Be devoured by the winds of change and destruction at your own cost, and change or stagnate...
(Elizabeth Vasilaki)