(written by Islander)
Pay no attention to the name of our site. We don’t really mean it. Well, honestly we mostly do mean it, but not all the time. Some of the time we hear singing that just makes us shake our heads in wonder and are helpless to bar the door against it. Today is one of those times. (So, for those few snarks who can’t resist yelling, “But there’s clean singing in this song!”, just choke that down or you’ll prove you’ve never been here before.)
What we have for you today is the premiere of a song named “Kob” off the thrilling new album Ambis by the Croatian epic doom band Elusive God, which will be released on May 9th by the always-interesting Personal Records.
Personal Records introduces the new album this way:
There’s an underlying story that connects all the lyrics on Ambis together: a seriously dark aspect of personal transformation offering a great sense of grandiosity and epicness towards the end. Of course, musically, ELUSIVE GOD‘s epic and grandiose moments are still present as an excellent contrast to the unprecedented anger, pain and aggression. For ELUSIVE GOD, it’s all about constantly reconnecting with what matters most – expression, art, and the story it holds – and Ambis is undoubtedly their most compelling & cohesive reconnection yet.
More than a year ago Elusive God provided a gripping preview of what the new album would bring us, through a video for the song “Ples Demona“. As we watch a twitchy and apparently strung-out man stumbling and flailing his way through a grim, abandoned building propelled by his own demons (and searching for we know not what), Elusive God spin out a deeply sinister and powerfully head-hooking song, atmospherically mystical and viscerally compulsive at the same time.
The music in this song has many core strengths that exert their powerful grip — a Sabbathian main riff that’s menacing and occult; bone-throbbing bass lines and skull-smacking drums; variations in the riffage that switch the moods, channeling a changing array of dark sensations; a vibrantly jolting segment that’s a ticket straight to headbang city; a supremely trippy guitar solo paired with very cool rhythm-section work; and a thoroughly diabolical finale spiced with electrifying drum fills and feverish fretwork flurries.
But one of the song’s most striking strengths are guitarist Shadow‘s vocals, striking in both their tonal range and their emotional evocations. There’s grit in his vibratory wails, and they’re spine-tingling when they soar sky-high in crystalline splendor.
If you have a taste for trad doom on the epic end of the scale and you’ve heard this song even once, the odds are high that you haven’t forgotten it.
And now we come to the song we’re premiering today, “Kob“. It will come as no surprise that this one is also anchored by an immediately catchy riff that’s also immediately chilling, like the eldritch spell of a dangerous conjuror, and it begins to sound even more forbidding as Elusive God begin varying it.
The song is also an even more dramatic demonstration of Shadow‘s vocal range, not just flying into the rafters but going low and ominous too. And it’s not just the melodies that sound diabolical, so do his vocals. The fact that he’s again singing in his native tongue somehow makes it even more gripping. Further, the song includes a pair of attention-seizing guitar solos that ecstatically warp and warble or sizzle and sear, as well as finely crafted performances by the rhythm section that create another vital element of variety as the song unfolds.
We already know that Elusive God know how to create a stirring finale, and they do that again here too, with the drums furiously hammering and the guitar furiously twisting.
Personal Records will release the album on CD and digital formats, and pre-orders are available now. They highly recommend it for fans of classic Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus, Atlantean Kodex, DoomSword, Krux, and especially Russia’s Scald.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.personal-records.com/product/pre-order-elusive-god-ambis-cd/
https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/ambis
ELUSIVE GOD:
https://linktr.ee/elusive_god
https://www.instagram.com/elusive.god.doom
https://www.facebook.com/elusive.god/