OverhookMusic

Elenium was one of the unfortunate bands left without a contract after Rage Of Achilles went on to bankruptcy. It's been awhile since the debut and finally this year, the band signed a contract with a newly established Kampas Records and here's their second album Caught In A Wheel.

While the debut caught raving reviews from all around the world, expectation ran pretty high when hearing about the news. Well, that can be said that their kind of music is pretty original, so it's pretty hard to start finding others to compare to, so I'll leave it up to you. The basics of the music are built on heavy and sometimes chugging guitar riffs, atmospheric keyboards and aggressive vocals. Death metal is still far away, even clean vocals aren't heard at all, unless you count some whispered and spoken voices.

It's quite captivating to listen how the crushingly heavy guitars and keyboards go hand in hand and blend together without taking anything away from each other. As an addition to this, some songs are sparkled with more mellow jazz-breaks, which might be really confusing at first listens, but the more you listen to the album through and through, the more they seem to smoothen. Extra mention for the spooky spatial sounds on The Escalator and the wild jamming on Velocity, which reminds me distantly of the theme song from The Simpsons.

It's a hard task to be completely original nowadays, but Elenium has succeeded really in well in that. The guys are skilled musicians and their work ethics and good spirit has carried them to the point, where they will most likely be more reckoned than before. Music of this class needs to be heard!

4,5 / 5

-Marko-