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With each year that passes and each new band that marches in under the banner of atmospheric doom-sludge-post-metal comes and goes, the excitement and flare of metal’s artistic side seems to have gotten a bit stale. Fortunately, Britain’s Fall of Efrafa are here to prove that their special breed of hardcore “crust-punk” can be just as epic and creative without succumbing to ambient pseudo-doom shenanigans. Keep your labels at home—this isn’t post-rock, post-metal, post-hardcore, or even progressive metal. It is a grandiose tale of mankind’s most pitiful disease, told through tormenting sounds of raw intensity and aggression.

Elil is the second installment of a trilogy called “The Warren of Snares,” which is highly influenced by the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. Accordingly the album’s lyrical content deals mostly with the rejection of religion (specifically Christianity) and all of its destructive forces. Structurally, the most striking feature of the album is the length of its songs—three tracks summing up to an over 60-minute album—incredibly long for a style which is known by definition for its brevity. Despite the length of the tracks, the band still maintains a relatively clean-cut hardcore style. As a result, there is unfortunately an overabundance of slow build-ups in between the exciting segments that often overstay their welcome. For many, this issue will most likely come down to a matter of taste, but personally I could have done without a 6-minute single-melody intro to the first track.

Shortcomings aside, the band deserves due praise for approaching the ever-popular style of epic song structure without turning into another faceless Neur-Isis clone. In staying true to their hardcore punk roots in Elil, Fall of Efrafa have chosen to join the next generation of extreme music with a style all their own.

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Reviewer: Sean Butze Added: January 7th 2008