KERRANG MAGAZINE ( November 15 2003 issue 981)
Words: Dom Lawson

Melodic death metal from the sewers of Finland
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"ALL OF our instruments got destroyed in a sewage accident!" laughs Tuomo Räisänen, bassist with Finnish melodic deathsters Elenium. "It was two weeks before we recorded the album and somehow our rehearsal room got flooded and everything was drowning into piss and shit. Now we`re hoping that we can get some compensation from the water company!"

Recorded with borrowed equipment it may have been, but the decidedly non-shitty 'For Giving - For Getting', Elenium´s astonishing debut album, sounds anything but second-hand. Bursting with invention and striking in its disregard for extreme metal convention, this is an album that has apparently benefited from the foul-smelling chaos that surrounded its creation.

"I think that disaster brought something good to the album," agrees Räisänen. "Our keyboard player lost all the sounds he´d been collecting for years. We were pretty angry when we recorded it!"

Formed in late 1995 in their hometown of Vantaa, Elenium - completed by guitarists Kasperi Heikkinen and Tommi Leinonen, drummer Mikko Niemelä, keyboardist Johannes Salo and vocalist J - have always let their progressive instincts dominate their music. Inspired by the keyboard-led melodic death metal of fellow countrymen Amorphis, the band have spent the last seven years honing their craft. Only now do they feel ready to unleash their complex but accessible sonic savagery on the world. And, according to Räisänen the world should sit up and listen to what Elenium have to say.

"We sing a lot about selfishness and how it affects our world," he says. "A song like 'Up The Long Ladder' is a big f**k you to all the rich people who rush forward, making money, and forget everyone else. We´re not a traditional death metal band. We sing about reality."

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