ELYSIAN BLAZE, Prophecies of Misery (2003, demo)

The music:
It was looking real good for Elysian Blaze’s first demo cover. Got the fancy border all set, that was a nice start…then went all crazy with the E & B in the logo, made it look real fine, really classy. Got it all nice and centered. “Lookin’ ace!” said the one man in this one-man band. Then came the time to decide what to put inside all that black space. The possibilities were infinite, the world was their oyster, this could be an incredible looking demo…and they blew it. Really, Mutatiis? Really???

The music:
Elyzian Blaze has a sterling reputation amongst lovers of the funeral doom/black metal fusion. And they have an album with the superb title of Blood Geometry. And indeed they deserve all the accolades they get for the albums, yet this early demo is a bit of a snoozer. It’s pretty much exactly what you would imagine a one-man band fusing black metal and funeral doom to sound like, and nothing more. The only remotely interesting thing here is that the slower moments are not only slow, but rather quiet, which gives depth to the overall sound picture – droning piano, creepy whispering, floating, ghostly, gothic wind tunnel sound effects. That kinda thing. But it’s hardly great, and the drum machine sounds like crap. Which is par for the course with one-man black metal. There were better things ahead for E.B., including cover art.
— Friar Wagner