Lykathea Aflame - Elvenefris (2000)^{Release ID: 2530}

The sole album from mysterious Czech Republic progressive/technical death metal outfit Lykathea Aflame seems to be very highly regarded within extreme metal circles these days. I first encountered it back in 2009 & remember finding it to be a very interesting listen but struggling to overcome a few obvious flaws in its make-up & that's still very much the case today. The sheer ambition that's become this album's calling card is remarkable to say that least & Lykathea Aflame deserve a lot of credit for taking the death metal sound to more obscure & unique places than the world was yet to experience. Much like South Carolina tech death legends Nile do with their Egyptian themes, Lykathea Aflame incorporate elements of their homeland's exotic local music scene to great effect with clean vocals making a nice contrast to some very deep, gutteral & monstrous death growls that I find to be one of the highlights of the album. There's an unusual positivity & a noticeably transcendental feel to this material that you won't find anywhere else & it's really up to the listener as to how they handle that as it's very much opposed to your usual grisly death metal atmosphere. I quite like it personally but doubt it'll ever compete for my affections with the darker death metal out there.

The death metal component is very brutal, consistently utilizing light-speed blast-beats similar to those which Flo Mounier has made a name for himself with Cryptopsy, but herein lies the challenge for me personally. You see, the production of the drum kit has significant issues with the kick drums sounding overly clicky, the ride cymbal being way too high in the mix & (most importantly) a very weak & high-pitched snare drum sound that does a great job of emulating a wind-up monkey playing on a tiny drum. Drummer Tomáš Corn does some really interesting stuff during a lot of the album & proves himself to be quite a capable & inventive skinsman in the process but his ability to synchronize his hands & his feet during his blast-beats leaves much to be desired & this combines with the weak drum sound to leave the more intense parts of the album sounding like someone has thrown a typewriter down a steep hill. He really does sacrifice control in the quest for sheer speed & this often leaves his transitions into the blasts sounding pretty jerky too, particularly as he often sounds like he's struggling to keep up with the guitars. As someone who is very fussy when it comes to rhythmic compliance ( I'm a former techno DJ as well as a brutal death metal musician after all), I struggle to cope with blemishes like these but at the same time I find myself captivated by the instrumentation around it, particularly the more creative keyboard & lead guitar melodies.

The rhythmic & production flaws make "Elvenefris" a frustrating record for me overall. It's got so much potential & sounds genuinely different to everything else that was around at the time but it's execution is simply too imperfect to be deserving of the adoration this release consistently draws from so many people these days. It annoys me that Corn's performance seems to be the most commonly praised element of the record too because he's the main thing holding "Elvenefris" up from having a much more significant impact on me. As it stands, this is an inventive & refreshing piece of work that's worth experiencing if you fancy something a little different.

For fans of Appalling Spawn, Nile & !T.O.O.H.!.

This album might just be one of the best death metal albums ever written.  To say that it is a varied and challenging piece of technical, brutal and progressive death metal is perhaps an understatement of gargantuan proportions.  There's no half measures here, if you're going to listen to Elvenefris you're gonna need to give it your absolute attention, otherwise you are going to end up lost as it undulates and surges through over an hour of some of the most well constructed death ever put to record.

Astonishingly, this was the band's only output.  Since Elvenefris the band have been in an unknown state, occasionally surfacing with the promise of new material but never quite getting around to delivering.  Perhaps they are still recovering from making this record?

The band were (are?) a collection of largely unknown artists at the point of the release of this record in 2000.  Their time as Appalling Spawn saw them make one album in 1998, but after some line up changes they became Lykathea Aflame (although rumour has it they are now known as just Lykathé.  Since Elvenefris only drummer Tomáš Corn has worked outside of the group turning up in epic Black Metallers, Cult of Fire.  His performance on this record is notable for its technicality and sheer speed alone.  He almost reaches Mounier like proportions of bashing at times although his drums do sound somewhat tinny in places on the record.  Despite this he is key to driving forward the machine that is Elvenefris over eleven tracks of intricate and arcane music that never stops being entertaining.

The vocals are of the brutal and guttural variety.  Ptoe also brings the odd clean/spoken word vocal in throughout the record and this shows his versatility in creating mystery as well as bestial utterances.  There is also sensible use of keyboards here to boost the atmosphere and create the varied textures of the record.  The band made good use of Ptoe's brother and also Pavel Marcel as session artists to build these atmospheres into the robust structures already being built by the band.

The real triumph on the album though for me is the guitars.  Able to comfortably work with a variety of styles, Ptoe and Martínek combine superbly to make their work the crowning glory of the whole record.  Applying a deft touch where required and just as easily ramping up the raging riffs for the more brutal death metal parts, they show an aptitude for not just metal music but world music also - check out the far eastern sounding passages that are littered throughout the record - that adds real depth to the record.

The album never goes avant-garde like a Dan Swanö record would do, retaining death metal as its core sound throughout and for this reason always feels familiar despite its variety and diversity.