酒酿丸子之八卦记忆碎片

Band - Elffor
Title - Unblessed Woods
Label - Self Released
Format - Unknown
Download Format: MP3/Quality: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Year - 2006
Genre - Atmospheric Black Metal/Pagan Folk
Country - Spain

TrackList:

1. Unblessed Woods
2. Through the Mist
3. Of Heretic Pagan Kingdom
4. Winter, Fullmoon, Sorrow...
5. Dark Orchestral Hate
6. ...From Ancient Scrypts
7. Gorgorium Goth
8. The Forgotten Dying Moon

With eleven active years behind him the dark Basconian warrior known as Eol returns with his fourth chapter titled ‘Unblessed Woods.’ As usual Elffor is without a label and thus his work has been self released again and limited to just five hundred copies which sold out in two months. So just getting your hands on a copy of this album is going to be a little tricky, but fortunately there are some copies still floating around on eBay.

Elffor’s last release introduced a lot more black metal aspects to the music, but Unblessed Woods is surely Eol’s blackest offering to date. In fact the album largely forgoes a lot of the folky/medieval sounds and occasional clean vocals that were present in the past three offerings in favor of a much more heavily synth laden black metal experience. This time around there’s plenty of brutal drumming and heavy riffing alongside the atmospheric synths and Eol’s agonizing screams.

What I found to be a tad annoying about the album is that on several places the drumming is generally just fast double bass pounding away with barely any other parts of the drums being hit. So lots of times what you hear is super fast double bass, distorted guitars, synths, and screams, and somehow it just doesn’t sound right to me. Fortunately Eol’s one of the best at creating a dark atmosphere through his music and indeed this album retains that same dark feeling that has been present in previous releases. So a plus in that spot, but what also bothers me about the album is that there really isn’t any single song that sticks out from the pack. I mean there good songs and all, but just not really the type of songs that I’d want to rip and put on my mp3 player to listen to often.

Hopefully on the next album Eol will bring back the beautiful folk and medieval music that he blended in so perfectly on past releases or otherwise I think Elffor may lose some of the uniqueness that the band surely had in the past. Unblessed Woods while having some good moments here and there will unfortunately just remain as one of those albums that I’d probably just throw on every now and then if I’m desiring some dark atmospheric black metal.

Review by JJM

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