ELVENEFRIS

"Elvenefris" is the debut full-length studio album by Czech Republic, Prague based death metal act Lykathea Aflame. The album was released through Obscene Productions in October 2000. Lykathea Aflame was formed in 1999 by three former members of Appalling Spawn and drummer Tomá? Corn (who replaced Gabriel "Gábin" Pavlík). Appalling Spawn were active from 1995 to 1999 and released the "Bestial, Mystical & Spiritual (The First Spawn)" demo in 1996 and the "Freedom, Hope & Fury (The Second Spawn)" full-length studio album in 1998 before morphing into Lykathea Aflame.

The material on the 11 track, 72:12 minutes long album is a combination of technically well played brutal death metal parts and epic atmospheric parts. The vocals are predominantly ultra brutal unintelligible growls, but there are spoken word passages on some tracks too. The musicianship is generally through the roof, and especially drummer Tomá? Corn plays on a jaw-dropping technical level (which often reminds me of Flo Mounier from Cryptopsy). Keyboards are used for effect, but other than that this is guitar, bass, drums, and vocal dominated death metal. There´s the occasional use of acoustic guitars, and middle eastern scales, which only adds to the variation of the album, but those effects aren´t used that often. "Elvenefris" features a powerful, and detailed sound production, so in that department it´s a quality release too.

"Elvenefris" is overall a quality release and a quite interesting one too. There´s a slight issue with the tracks sounding a bit too much the same, and the keyboard dominated 11:14 minutes long closing track "Walking In The Garden Of Ma'at" being a bit of a tedious ambient listen, which could easily have been cut to a playing time of a few minutes and made a nice outro to the album, but instead drags and drags until the listener feels ready to go to sleep. So upon conclusion it´s not a perfect release by any means, but take each track out of context (except "Walking In The Garden Of Ma'at"), and it´s hard not to be impressed by the epic sound, the brutality, the technical playing, and the relatively original sound of the album. So despite a few isues a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is still deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)