As everyone knows, the best way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon is to listen to your favourite thrash metal bands. Destruction tick, Kreator tick, Power Trip tick, Elyrean tick. Wait, what? Elyrean I hear you ask. Yep I’ve been listening to their debut EP “Blacken the Sun” and they are fast becoming my go to band for a fix of more than outstanding thrash tones. Although they name Sylosis, Death, and Revocation as their main influences, Elyrean bring their own unique blend of thrash fusing together improbable mixtures of Melodic/Tech/ Thrash with near Black influenced vocals to produce this cracking EP.
“Blacken the Sun” has everything any self-respecting thrash fiend could want as it pulses with this extraordinary energy and you can feel through the songs and awesome musicianship that they love what they do. Exhibit A is “Distorted Reality” an epic 7-minute track that shows off their aforementioned incredible musicianship. Make sure you are ready for the severe face shredding riffage and awesome lead work tied together with some doom-based drum grooves and blackened type vocals that just rip.
Exhibit B features the use of classical guitar licks to bring some of the atmosphere to “Swarming Darkness” but as you keep listening, you’ll hear duelling guitars but then hang on tight cause away we go with neck snapping shredding and ferocious drum work. Lyrically the last couple of lines are, “is this really the end or just a means to start again”, well for me its definitely the later.
Want more evidence, really??, OK then the title track “Blacken the Sun” is thrash straight from the heart, and “Fallen Ground” is another fucking metal masterpiece with both tracks providing superb riffs and lead work, vocal power that would shatter glass at a thousand paces, and drum tempos that would leave Formula 1 cars in its wake.
I’m not going to write anything about the other 3 tracks, not because they are let downs, far from it, but because there’s enough evidence here already for you to get off your lazy arses and grab yourself a copy of this stunning and mutated version of thrash.
I’ve listened to “Blacken the Sun” more than a couple of times now and I’m loving it more and more every time I listen to it. I’m sure that if Elyrean can keep up this superb standard of work, and provide more of the same depth and intensity so effectively blended in this EP, they may just be writing the next major chapter of thrash.
Rating – 5/5
https://www.facebook.com/ElyreanTMTM/
The Metal Wanderlust 