Au Ellai

After exploding onto the funeral doom scene 4 years ago with their outstanding debut Ea Taesse, Ea seem to have lost their magic. It's hard to say exactly what it is that's missing, since the music still made out of the same slow guitar drones, disjointed piano melodies and epic keys/vocals as before, but somewhere along the way what made them something special seems to have disappeared.

While disappointing, Au Ellai is a different kind of disappointment than Ea II was; the band's second effort still contained some of the impressive and moving music of the debut, but it also had a large volume of boring and lacklustre music. What made it lacking in comparison to the debut was a large amount of dull, generic music, rather than a total lack of high quality output. This album is not filled with superfluous boring sections; instead it simply lacks anything of great standards. I would say that this won't leave you as bored as II did, but it doesn't leave any of the good impressions either, it's just so flat.

Au Ellai is certainly a pleasant listen, there is a constant sense of melody throughout, none of the music is bad, and the overall sound is excellent, but it really doesn't achieve anything. I find it hard to believe that this music has been self-edited in any way at all. The band seem to have written some music that is aesthetically pleasing to the ear, and figured it was good enough to include on the album. There doesn't seem to have been an effort to strive for any greater quality than some rudimentary pleasant chords backed with some simple piano keys over the top. It's just like what the band has done in the past, but without any attention to detail, or effort in making the music truly great, the project feels far too comfortable in merely being bearable. The whole release seems to be made of nothing but the bands first ideas they had when they sat down to write, I would be surprised if 15 minutes of music the band had written was rejected for this release.

If you are accustomed to the Ea sound, there's nothing here to surprise you which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, particularly in funeral doom, but there isn't anything here that you'll take in preference to the bands first works. If you are not familiar with the Ea sound, the band tends to settle in on a couple of tricks and use them all quite heavily. Rhythm guitars are used solely as a backdrop, merely slamming away on downtuned chords, some orchestral keys are typically used in a similar way. The main focus is usually on either the guitar leads or clean, flowing piano notes. The former are also typically slow chords too, simply in a higher register, but genuine lead melodies pop up every 7 or 8 minutes to keep things fresh. The piano work is practically unchanged since the band's inception, and is probably the main reason why the band feels so flat, where before they seemed careful and majestic; here they tend to seem really uninspired and more or less ad-libbed. As if the idea is hit a key every second or two, and let the pleasant ring of the note substitute for actual music. As I said earlier, it does still sound pretty nice to the ears, but it doesn't seem to evoke any real meaning or purpose as they once did.

As with the other releases, the band has gotten themselves a very nice sound which helps the combination of piano melodies and funeral doom dirges be more than palatable. The piano keys have a nice echoing ring to them, the guitars are fuzzed out and majestic, the drums are distant and deep, and the use of occasional clean vocals help the band create a suitable 'epic' soundscape. It's not really any different that what has come before it, but it was always a strong element of the band, so the lack of variation isn't a bad thing.

The third release by this Russian band is certainly not a pain to listen to, and yeah, if you really need to hear some new funeral doom that won't put you to sleep and sound nice, this album will do it, but it really doesn't offer anything more. There isn't any magic or greater brilliance to this album, it's nice sounding and that’s about all there is to this album.