Elend's masterpiece of blackened orchestral majesty The Umbersun was first released on Music For Nations in the late 90's, but it's more recent release history has been a little strange, with two different re-issues of the album comng out on different labels, the first through Polish metal re-issue label Metal Mind, the other a more definitive edition from the French Orphika label. The Orphika edition is the one to get as it was re-mastered under the direction of the musicians themselves and also boasts a gorgeous package design, but as it's also very hard for me to get in stock, I'm also carrying the Metal Mind version from 2006 which comes in a digipack with twelve-page booklet and features the original MFN album artwork.

One of the most harrowing and apocalyptic neo-classical albums of the 90s, The Umbersun was the fourth album from the French/Austrian ensemble Elend, whose name translates from the German to "misery". And that's just one of the dark emotions that this group evokes through their lush and grandiose music; some other key emotional responses to this album might include awe, dread, even abject fear. As the final installment in Elend's ambitious Officium Tenebrarum trilogy, 1998's The Umbersun is their masterpiece, at least in my opinion; a Satanic liturgical opera that centers around Lucifer's denouncement of God, and the Morning Star's subsequent fall from grace into darkness. It's told through a stunning mix of industrial/electronic elements and actual strings, brass and other orchestral instrumentation, and even features the presence of an actual twenty-voice choir; a symphony of magisterial orchestral music with soaring operatic female singing, vast choral parts, wailing witch-howls, and some judiciously used harsher male vocals that appear in a number of spoken word parts, which at times approach an almost black metal level of intensity. These voices are set against the spiraling minor key creepiness of Elend's orchestral backdrop of bombastic French horns, booming kettledrums, haunting strings, piano and droning brass, with subtle industrial undercurrents appearing as dark electronic ambience and distant grinding textures. In many ways, the music of The Umbersun is a direct precursor to the current work of Gnaw Their Tongues, who also combines industrial elements with a blackened form of classical orchestral music; this album will also be of interest to fans of Shinjuku Thief, especially their Witch Trilogy.

A classic of hellishly beautiful dark orchestral grandeur, and one of the finest examples of 90s era neo-classical blackness.