Austrian black metal institution Ellende reworks the songs from an EP that he released several years ago and the new sound does some astonishing things to the tracks.
Late in 2014 L.G., the sole member of Ellende, released the EP Weltennacht and now he reworks the three tracks for his second release on AOP Records after 2019’s Lebensnehmer. Interesting is how different the three songs sound on this new release. These are not simply remastered or remixed versions but rather very, very similar tracks as he didn’t change the basic riffs and the lyrics are also the same. Interestingly, he didn’t choose the easy path and rewrote the songs in a more accessible way but he took away some of the moody violin parts (for example in the title track Triebe II, where he replaced some of them with really nice guitar arpeggios). And at the same time, the tracks got longer which one might not have expected as such. While the tracks turn a bit more towards cleaner passages in production they still keep the moodiness that made the original songs already stand out.
Weltennacht is one of those moody black metal tracks that one should have heard if you really want to dig into the genre. With nearly eleven minutes (in the new version), the riffing and especially the dense and atmospherically interesting twists and turns of make this a standout – just listen to the brilliantly incorporated marching drums underneath the semi-acoustic passage in the middle. The drums slowly build and move towards the front before they break down in favor of a spoken word sample, which is then again broken down by another blastbeat attack that itself takes the position in front of everything else. Exactly at that one moment, when the blastbeat breaks and a little nuanced power drumming kicks in, the guitar also sets in a pitch higher than before. Those might be little details but they make the songs really interesting.
The new versions are all a bit longer than the original ones and it seems as if those extra minutes or seconds really give them some kind of new life. It would have been easy to just remaster them, but L.G. wanted to do justice to three tracks he felt are essential to Ellende and thus he came up with these new versions whose seemingly little details can really fascinate the audience and make for a very different experience. In an age when a lot of artists just release remastered versions it is very nice to have one really dive into his own songs and re-think them. And for those who never paid attention to Ellende – Triebe II is a good way to get to know the band, especially when comparing the two versions.
