Review Summary: A homage to Tolkien black metal.
Emyn Muil is a one man project that started in 2012. Created by Saverio Gioves “Nartum”, the band was part of a bigger project called “Nartum Art – Music Projects”, whose aim was for Nartum to express his sensibility to black metal and all of its subgenres. Emyn Muil is therefore a very personal project and a way for Nartum to express his love for Tolkien’s World. The first record, Túrin Turambar Dagnir Glaurunga, was released in 2013 and already showed a lot of potential in the epic black metal scene. In fact, Emyn Muil is often cited as a reference in the genre, alongside Summoning (credited as the creators of the genre) and Caladan Brood.
The subgenre being quite small, it is hard to stand out with your own unique sound. Most of the time, bands sound either too much like Summoning or fall under another genre. Elenion Ancalima starts off on a very atmospheric introduction before heading towards an epic fourteen minute (The Lay Of Númenorë) track that features every aspect of Tolkien Black Metal : atmospheric guitars, black metal screams, some female vocals, folkloric melodies and of course, lyrics of epic sections of Tolkien’s World. While The Lay Of Númenorë stayed quite calm, Ar-Pharazôn brings changes of pace during the entire song that enables the listener to feel the energy of the heavier section and the emotions of the epic-atmospheric parts. The most epic moment of the album is reached at the end of Far Umbar when Nartum screams in a way that makes you picture a leader pumping a crowd before a fight. In fact, you hear the crowd screaming back which helps you picture that scene even better. The album ends on another atmospheric outro which soothes the atmosphere before the end.
Although the intro and outro both fit the idea of an atmospheric album, if you take them off, you only have around thirty minutes of epic black metal which falls a little short. In the end, this leaves you a little wanting for more, especially after the epic ending of Far Umbar. The fact that this is Nartum’s way of expressing his love for epic black metal makes it obvious that his influences will be very present throughout the record. In fact, this album sounds a lot like Summoning and doesn’t bring anything fresh to the genre. While this is not necessarily a problem, new and unique sounds are what makes you want to listen to a record over and over. This is saved by the quality of the epic parts of the album that really help you picture scenes while listening to the record.
This is definitely another step forward for Emyn Muil. Once again, Nartum has proved he can craft quality Tolkien black metal. One can only hope that his next release will feature unique sounds and even more new addition. The female vocals can definitely be improved and used a bit more to create a mystic atmosphere for example. All in all this a great effort and definitely a great homage to Tolkien.
