Todbringer

I am absolutely stunned that no one has reviewed this album yet…


Ellende’s “Todbringer” is one of the best atmospheric black metal albums I have ever listened to, with expansive instrumentation and complicated changes in a single melody throughout the album, that's right, a single fucking melody. I heard someone say “Usually that sort of composition yields lukewarm results” but the entire album pulls you in and changes the melody through use of different instrumentation and ways of composing that is absolutely mind-boggling.

The first track on the album is a piano piece, a beautiful introduction, explicitly stating the melody so that the other tracks could build on it. All of the tracks have unique things that make the album fun to listen to, the track “Verehrung” makes use of unique percussion after a short picked guitar progression drenched in reverb, then bursts into these howls. Or the last track before the bonus, starts off with that same melody, this time acoustic, which slowly builds with a second acoustic guitar part, then slowly the drums get added (I think I hear some keyboards in the mix too, not entirely sure though). Then slowly, the music builds and builds until its at its breaking point. The melancholy atmosphere on this track is a perfect end to the album. Did I mention that most (if not all) of the songs on this album were written by one guy?!?

That one guy, Lukas Gosch is a real mastermind with the overall composition of the album. With the first few listens I didn't even notice that it was one melody because of all of the differentiation between the way its played.

This album is incredible, it shows a great deal of potential for this band, even though I don’t speak Austrian or German or whatever the hell they’re speaking, I am absolutely addicted to this album. It reminds me of Agalloch with soft post-rocky parts and Ulver with the vocals and heavier distorted parts.

Really fucking cool, I’m excited to see what else they can do on future albums. Cool album art too. Play on skeleton, play on.