review by: Roberto Martinelli

Don't you love discovering diamonds in the rough? Bands that are SO amazing and original but no one has really heard of them? Lykathea Aflame is one of those bands. This Czech group sounds like a mix between Cryptopsy and Orphaned Land, but it goes so much deeper than that. To get those comparisons out of the way, you get totally mind blowing drumming that is a dead ringer for Cryptopsy's Flo Mounier, with the impossible snare speed and maximum notes crammed into every fill, gonzo song structures that change rhythm and direction faster than you can keep up, and these Middle-Eastern flavored melodies that come up time and again.

But then there's this new age element to Lykathea Aflame. As alarming as it may sound, it's brilliant. Keyboards back up the technical death cyclone and meld with the guitars to create stirring, uplifting melodies. The vocals are largely in the low, piggy, Lord Worm style, which makes them all the more bizarre as they're all about spiritual enlightenment, giving to others, and other positive topics. Where so many bands' lyrics - and death metal bands' in particular - are cryptic, nonsensical rubbish that is trying to be poetic, Lykathea Aflame's lyrics are readable and convey something real and tangible. The last track starts off with a wish by the band that the listeners steps be guided by light before kicking off an enormously moving 12-minute new age keyboard track with a jungle full of chirping, trilling birds.

Positive new age technical death with folk influences? What, are you crazy? Maybe, but it's brilliant. It feeds my soul; it makes me want to cry. Now, I wouldn't want to see this style become popular, because having a bunch of technical death bands talk about loving God would get really smarmy and I'd have to consider aborting the Maelstrom project, but what Lykathea Aflame has done on Elvenefris is so pure and ultimately unlike anything else that anyone who likes this kind of music and who isn't so narrow minded as to not accept anything outside of mindless Cannibal Corpse-type lyrics will be so happy to have discovered this quintessential group. While this album actually came out in 2000, it's still going on my best of list for this year, and most certainly my best of list for all time.