Metal Observer

This is supposed to be a debut you know. I’m guessing the members of ELENIUM either have a natural talent for playing glittering Progressive Death Metal or just hired someone else to write the songs for their debut album “For Giving For Getting” (nice title): yeah, like a bunch of Finnish Metal heads really care or even want to take credit for someone else’s work, so I think I´ll go with the first guess: ELENIUM are natural born musicians.

I’ve heard talks about this band being a fine return to glory days of AMORPHIS when the Finnish chameleons chugged out two praised masterpieces: “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” and “Elegy”. Sure I´ll drink to that but it’s narrow minded to leave it that way, the six piece hailing from Vantaa have a lot of different styles poured into their ever flowing Metal music. The consequence of having a sound like the one ELENIUM are presenting here is that you can easily get lost in the instrumental layering and loose track of the structures, so given the nature of complexity repeated listens are a must and very much deserved. Ok, ELENIUM sounds a bit like AMORPHIS at the time of the aforementioned classics and have a versatile sound, time for part two.

The bands sound circles around three portals of Metal: Melo Death Metal, Gothic Metal and Progressive Metal. The heavy riffs are the main guitar ingredients, there are some lead harmonies, otherwise the keyboard supplies most of the melodic stuff. Most Death Metal bands have solos. If you’re into the progressive side of solos (shredding, fast scales, arpeggios and the likes) I can promise you a big treasure chest on “For Giving For Getting” filled with slithery soloing played with the utmost conviction.

The clean vocals of J (that’s not a type error) and Johannes Salo´s keys bring the gothic melody lines up front with the Death Metal guitars. Salo also practices some of the more progressive keyboard fingering and is a key figure in the sound (in my opinion), just listen to “Impostor” and follow his playing all the way from the gentle caressing intro to the very end.

This is very promising stuff for a debut; be it the oriental beginning of “Nameless – Faceless”, the unusual harsh screaming in “Eye For A Lie”, the creepy atmosphere in “Under The Mug” or the unity of Jazz drumming and jaw dropping solos in “To Aim And Miss”, everything on “For Giving For Getting” shows that these guys are willing to do something out of the ordinary. It’s not complete though, there’s still time to mature until the band chooses to release their second album.

Some of you might just think that ELENIUM are yet another successful cloning of CHILDREN OF BODOM´s Circus Metal sound, I challenge you to stick with that thought and go through “For Giving For Getting” a couple of times and still resent my words of praise. Others should definitely try to catch this band and give them a chance. (Online March 31, 2004)

8 / 10

Frodi