Fatum Elisum are another new Doom name to me, and are French to boot, a place that has produced a small but a very classy number of bands of this ilk. Nice primitive cover art promises much too but reveals nothing more.
The intro is 'Pulvis Et Umbra', a religious sounding piece of highly impressive plainsong with deep, rich vocals; a very impressive start. The first track proper, 'The Pursuit Of Sadness', doesn't let them down as a follow on. It has a classic, slow winding doom riff fills the cathedral and a full, rich voice calls down the haunting religious sounding melody with sombre authority and effortless control. Somewhere between a less fanatical Griftegard and a less harsh Procession it has a fantastic and immediate sound that swells to fill the space around you. Sometimes dropping into a brutally heavy pounding riff with the voice dragging out a rasping, ragged sound to suit it, sometimes fading into softer passages it moves and shifts, too. At fifteen minutes it has time to flex its considerable muscle and does it well, though oddly the ending comes on me a little suddenly.
By the second song, 'Twilight Prophet', you realise that Fatum Elisum don't do short songs. Weighing in at twenty minutes, it begins with some quiet simple guitar notes and whispered vocals before dragging out a slow, heavy riff that would do a funeral doom band proud. There is the touch of ' Gothic' period Paradise Lost too, just a hint in the anguished voice and the way the melody drops away from the solid riff. It really is a classy melding of doom, death and atmosphere. A particular passage of cried voice and clean vocals is mesmeric, especially when the riff returns to obliterate it and some almost sermonising, gruff words are raised over the top. The yearning in the guitar melody near the end is just guy wrenching to me: perfectly doom, beautifully scripted, emotionally charged.
The title track starts with a melodic death metal style. Not my thing entirely but it soon strips back into a slower tempo. Still very death, rather Paradise Lost in style and the varying passages keep your interest up.
Closing with 'East Of Eden', they give us seventeen minutes of a sometimes more introspective nature than the others, but it is equally adept and capable of piledriving the riff onto you. Between the quiet wailing passages they even push in some Wolves In The Throne Room style thrashing melodic riffs that oddly fit far better than they should. And so Fatum Elisum close this chapter in a scrape of feedback and the room seems suddenly quiet.
There are few points to quibble with on this highly impressive debut, particularly with the variation used in the excellent vocals and the control of the riffs throughout. It might seem a little like a collection of EPs rather than an album, I suppose if I was being picky. There also might be something in the thought that the songs being so long and necessarily full of variation within themselves that they sometimes shift so much from where they started that they lose a bit of individual identity. But these are, I stress, minor queries over the whole because when your debut full length calls up the monolithic names of early Paradise Lost, Procession and Griftegard and does so with confidence then you know a band is really onto something.
Already very, very good, Fatum Elisum could just be something spectacular next time round.
http://www.myspace.com/fatumelisum
Gizmo
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