The Dutch gothic-metal band Elizium started back in 1991. It took 15 years to release their debut-album “Angel of Mistrust”. Elizium radiates an atmosphere of times long past, the songs are about brave knights, fare maidens and battlefields. The music of Elizium is dark (including chiming church bells), threatening and sometimes aggressive with heavy guitarrifs (by Peter Röge) and bombastic keyboards (Erik Dijkstra) varied by beautiful piano-playing. Although Peter Berends’ vocals are quite monotonous he surely is an emotional singer, sometimes full of anger, other times rather nice, then again almost grunting. I think it fits to their gothic-music.

Marco Snoeks plays bass guitar and Gerard Manoch is beating the drums. I don’t like the sound of the drums very much, they sound somewhat hollow, they don’t fit in with the heavy guitarrifs.

It is a pity, otherwise the cd would have been really heavy and the rate would have been higher.

The intro of “Angel of Mistrust” is very bombastic, I like that! Favourite tracks are the title song, “Land of Scars” (a ballad with background vocals of Mariska Blaas), “Murder Of Crows” (a semi-ballad with church bells, it’s dedicated to a friend of the band), “Ode to Death” (an epical song about an battle which started in the middle of a battlefield somewhere in 1365) and “Fall of Lucifer” (a great gothic-metal song with an playing time well over 6 minutes).
I certainly hope it takes less than 15 years to make the next cd.