ELLFOR - Son OF The Shades

\r\nEllfor is a Spanish symphonic/ambient metal band with some black metal shades and the one man project from Suffering Down’s keyboardist Eöl. The band has released four albums to today and "Son OF The Shades" is actually their second album initially released in 2003. But after an agreement with Northern Silence Productions to reissue all of their albums in chronological order during 2007-2009, Ellfor’s second album is being re-released while also remastered and rerecorded with a 12 page booklet and new cover artwork, done by Igor "Mugi" Mugerza and two exclusive bonus tracks ("Hidden In The Nebular Landscapes" and "Endless Dark Flames") composed back in 2002 and recorded in 2007 with a better sound.
\r\nJudging from the cover of the cd at first you get the impression that you are dealing with a harsh and grim black metal release but you need no more than a few moments’ hearing of this record to realize how wrong and far from the truth your first assumption was! Basically their music connects the sounds of synthesizer with some rarely arising guitar sounds thus creating an ambient atmosphere with a vague suspicion of black metal. Long layers of ambient keyboards constitute the heart of the disc and the framework of each piece with only occasionally some guitar parts of the guest musician "Jabo" being used although still remaining rather in the background. Melancholic keyboard lines, wind noises, lonely pianos and occult choirs inevitably and strongly reminding of Summoning following closely their structural and musical patterns, but with an even less black-metallically output than Summoning’s efforts, mostly of their first period, and surely less talented than any of Summoning’s material. And the main reason is that while Summoning transform the repetitiveness into their songs to a wonderful hypnotic and majestic, picturesque atmosphere, Elffor from the other hand the only thing that really manage to accomplish is a rather boring and a whole lot of inferior quality ambiance and while the repetitive attempts try to build and evoke epic soundscapes, the result most of the time is massively leading them astray. The drums are not even worth mentioning here since the tempo throughout the album stays strictly to one pace, the restrained guitars are barely audible, and the keyboards (which are the masterful foundation of everything) feature approximately 3 notes per piece with some spasmodic attempts at variation but overall their patterns are completely simple and dull. The vocals from the other hand (both growly black metal vocals and clean) are holding only a very small and meager part of their share on this album while there are also some backbeats that have a near-folkish essence to them and the use of bagpipes and a traditional Spanish percussion instrument called txalaparta, a specialized Basque music device of wood or stone along with various sound samples of swords and horses here and there in order to somehow justify the epic tendency of the songs.
\r\nComing to an end, for me this is simply tolerable music and not because it lacks the necessary brutality, but because it sounds completely passionless. Only for die-hard fans of keyboard laden albums. \r\n