Elffor "From The Throne Of Hate" CD (Bonustracks)

Track 9 is a is a play on words and sometimes referred to as "Mysterious Dawn" on some sources (including the official Bandcamp page). But on every tracklist of the vinyl and CD pressings it is listed as "Misterious Dawn". Limited 500 copies

Elffor wound up being a rather prolific project once Eöl buckled down and re-recorded and remastered his first four albums from as far back as 1998 in the case of his purely dungeon synth debut Into the Dark Forest.... Since the only readily available recordings of these albums are the "alternate versions", I'm going to analyze the third album From the Throne of Hate on its own merit without comparing it to the original recording.
From the Throne of Hate is the album where Eöl finally commits to black metal in the Elffor project as opposed to sporadically dropping the guitars and drums in uneven portions on Son of the Shades. And full support for the stylistic change, but here's the problem: the result here is real mediocre. Son of the Shades at least could call itself a pretty interesting dungeon synth album with some grandiose keyboards, but those keyboards got toned down on From the Throne of Hate to balance out the increased presence of the black metal guitar and drums. That would be a sensible move, but the composition of the songs and the rather still rather fuzzy production makes the album sound real lethargic. All the songs are real slow paced aside from some burst of blast beats on " My Hatefull End" and "Upon the Barbarian Woods". The album isn't quite one-dimensional when it comes to pace, but the slow moments outnumbering the fast ones makes the album drag. It doesn't help when the longest two tracks in the main album - opening track "Old" which is half dungeon synth already, and "Grimmest Winternights" in the middle of the album - are the slowest of all.
There are some genuinely good tracks here. "Rare Woods" and "The Essence of Hate" execute the subdued tempo pretty well actually and "My Hatefull End" is rather enjoyable as well. The actual saving grace coming from this issue is the bonus tracks though, and this is probably the biggest advantage of having the "alternate version" as opposed to the original. "Mysterious Dawn" is a really strong track and a bit of a foreshadowing of what Elffor would sound like in the next couple of albums while "Ancient Rebirth" is one of my favorite dungeon synth pieces Eöl has composed for Elffor.
The remaining material on the album isn't terrible, but it does leave me rather indifferent. So with all that in consideration, From the Throne of Hate is an album I'd only pick up to add a couple of enjoyable songs to your playlists while the rest is forgettable. The album is a pretty big step of what would come next though.

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