Elis: Griefshire
I came across this album in my search for something in the symphonic/gothic metal genre as good as Tristania’s Illumination. I haven’t found it, but this one is rather striking.
Griefshire could just as well be classified as progressive rock, and in fact I can imagine that if the heavy guitars were lightened up it might even be possible to believe that it’s a product of the 1970s. Moreover, it’s what used to be called a “concept album”—a collection of songs on a single theme and, in this case, a narrative. The narrative is only implied in the songs; to get the whole story you have to read this explication (note: link is to a PDF file which loads slowly).
It’s an ambitious work, and that’s one reason why it stands out for me in relation to some others which are artistically comparable. I wouldn’t be able to argue if someone described it as pretentious and excessive, but I have a certain admiration for the grand effort even when it falls short. Like a lot of prog-rock, it’s more interesting than affecting, but it’s quite interesting.
The narrative involves a couple of brothers, a woman they both love, and a sort of spiritual quest which ends in disaster. It’s full of promising references to eternal truth and redemption and salvation, but these seem to be resolved in a conventionally vague psychological package of answers found within etc. The disappointing final song, which seems to promise some sort of transcendence, delivers only a decidedly trivial-sounding promise of “a new decade of solutions,” which sounds like a commercial.
The major weakness, and it’s a big one, is in the lyrics, which are talky and discursive, too often talking about emotions rather than summoning them. Maybe some allowance should be made for the fact that the band’s native language is not English (it’s German—they’re from Liechtenstein); still, they chose to write in English. Two songs are, for no obvious reason, in German, and to my ears they work better, but maybe that’s because I’m at best sub-literate in German. They certainly sound good: German might be a better standard language for heavy metal than English.
So the album is far from being an entire success, but—here comes that word again—it’s consistently interesting. And there’s an extra-musical aspect that makes it more so. The narrative and the lyrics are the work of the band’s very fine lead vocalist, Sabine Dünser. A couple of days after she finished recording the vocals for Griefshire, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died the next day, still in her twenties. Given the obvious sincerity of the spiritual search evidenced by the lyrics, a Christian can’t help but speculate: did God take her because she was at her nearest approach to him, more open than she would ever be? Not a question that can be answered, of course, but one wonders, and hopes.
You can hear thirty-second samples of the album at eMusic.
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