The Binary Abode

Elysian – Wires Of Creation – review

C.Ludvigsson — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:20:27 +0000

I have listened to metal for some 20 years now and I do remember the advent of melodic deathmetal in the early 90-ties with landmark albums from epic bands such as Dark Tranquillity, In flames and At The Gates. As time went on the genre suffered from quite the inflation as is natural when everybody wants to jump the bandwagon – I´m even guilty of that myself as I played drums in Odeum in the late 90-ties. Now, as we are 2 years into the second decade of the new millenium, melodic daethmetal is still very much alive even though alot of bands has adopted the boring commersialized variety of this great music. So when a band comes along that actually injects the genre with new ideas but still manages to retain the core elements, I for one am getting a fucking hard-on! And Elysian does just that with the epic, powerful and progressive brand of melodic deathmetal presented on debut album “Wires Of Creation”. The intricate harmonies and heavy rythm guitars soars over a very grounded and groovy backend of drums and bass and if the song-writing skills are there – which they very much are on this album – that´s all you are going to need as far as instrumentation goes. The vocals, which are very important to this kind of music are top-fucking-notch; ranging from mid-range throaty screams to deep diaphragmical growls, the singer conveys a dynamic, controlled and powerful vocal effort that to me seems anchored in all emotions rather than just the pure guttural expression of agression.

Elysian avoids the fierce at-the-gatsy speed and triplets in favour for a well-built and epic mid-tempoish musical landscape filled with progression, emotion, harmony and they do it with skill and conviction! I hear a little bit of what Embraced offered with “Amorous Anathema” and some of the epic feel from Insomniums “Across The Dark” but also a tad of “Queensrychie” melodies and even some progressive elements and melody from a band such as Porcupine Tree or even Pink Floyd! But name-dropping is a fairly insufficient way of describing Elysian´s music as they stand out on their own in a most fullfilling way! Thanks guys for treating my elitistical sonic senses to this wonderful music!

As an digital artist, I naturally take an interest in the artwork – and I must say it looks great and it conveys the feeling of the music in a fine way! Probably an experiment with Art History Brush, I tried a little quickie today myself just to see if I was on the right track, and it seems I was, check it out below.

You can – and fucking should! -enjoy a stream of the entire album on the following adress: http://www.nocleansinging.com/2012/03/23/full-album-stream-elysians-wires-of-creation/

Transhumanism

C.Ludvigsson — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:01:02 +0000

Inspiration: An older piece, thought I´d say a few words about what influenced this particular artwork. The ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil concerning the clash of humanity and technology that he conveys in the documentary Transcendant Man was basically the starting point of my research. From there I went on to theories and conpiracies theories of chemtrails, morgellans disease, hybridisation and GNA (synthetic DNA). Read up here: ? . The conpiracy crowd have it all figured out and it goes like this: Someone (the elite?) are spreading heavy metals, unindentified fibers and engineered red blood cells through chemtrails and these compounds are invading the human body where some sort of hybridization is taking place (morgellans disease). Hence Transhumanism. I´m not going any further into all this weirdness than this; however, even if I don´t necesserily believe all of this I find it interesting and it did indeed inspire this particular piece.

Creative Allies

C.Ludvigsson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:52:25 +0000

Hey, I´m still alive. Been doing a little bit of this and that. Recently started an account at Creative Allies, doing some different design contests……

Check it out!

http://creativeallies.com/Ludvigsson

Visually mixed nuts!

C.Ludvigsson — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:04:16 +0000

Just got word that it´s time to do cd artwork for Unsolved and their second album, a great band to work with! Also, some quick new and old stuff I´ve put together mostly for my Google+ stream….. Have a good one!

Moving trees and one for sorrow with Insomnium

C.Ludvigsson — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:38:08 +0000

Hiya all! Sitting here listening to the mighty Insomnium and their newest effort One For Sorrow. I love this band and seriously, what´s not to like? If I would choose one word to describe Insomnium´s music it would have to be “epic”! Because besides raging double bass drums, intricate melodies, old-school growling and heavy-ass riffing they are just simply that. Epic! However, I´m not to fond of some of the clean vocals though, especially the weirdly melodicated and fotball-choiry singing in Through The Shadows. But in the end, a solid effort! And here´s those darn moving trees…

4 new artworx!

C.Ludvigsson — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:37:30 +0000

So, been hard at it lately, photographing and making digital art; getting alot of inspiration from the great photographic community on Google+! Here´s an invitation link: https://plus.google.com/i/4sdfUdBEbok:92Qn3hMllok and here´s my profile: https://plus.google.com/#107483128324124814228. And here below, some new artistic efforts! Have a nice wekeend folks!

New art piece

C.Ludvigsson — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:48:10 +0000

A new piece of art was done today. Took a pic of Elinor Ludvigsson whom I did a shoot with a while back and just went creative.

Old artworx!

C.Ludvigsson — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:21:00 +0000

So, I looked through an old drive and found some older stuff that I have revamped ever so slightly. Here ya go…

Firelady

C.Ludvigsson — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:36:57 +0000

Any questions?

C.Ludvigsson — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:07:59 +0000

Been slow at it for a while, but today while thoroughly enjoying Tesseracts album One I got a surge of inspiration which resulted in this little piece. Illustrator, Poser and Photoshop was used in this creation. Peace…..