Album Review: Kadavar & Elder, Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light
Like many over the last 20-plus months, this Kadavar and Elder collaboration was born of plague-era restlessness — two bands who’d generally be quite active on one or another touring circuit forced to sit out and wait for live music to ‘happen’ again, coming together with reportedly little thought given to what the result might be, but just to jam and try something out. When one is sitting at home for a year-plus, there’s plenty of time to think of these things, and as the majority of the once-Massachusetts-based lineup of Elder reside in Berlin, Germany, where Kadavar also make their home, there was less concern for travel restrictions — Elder bassist Jack Donovan still resides in the US and could not travel for the sessions — as they got together at the latter’s studio to begin crafting what ultimately became Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light (on Robotor Records), a seven-song, 44-minute long-player. And, for all the professed “we didn’t know what would happen” narrative — indeed the first lyric on the first track is “We don’t know how it began” — it sure feels like someone in the six-player lineup had an idea that a record would come out of it, or at very least decided there was enough in their jamming worth building into one.
Of course, it’s an immediately notable release, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating in saying the project includes two of the current generation of heavy music’s most accomplished songwriters in Kadavar‘s Lupus Lindemann and Elder‘s Nick DiSalvo, each guitarist/vocalist for their respective outfit. From the nine-minute opener “From Deep Within,” both of their presences are felt readily across the album’s span. With Kadavar‘s Tiger Bartelt (drums) and Simon Bouteloup (bass) as well as Elder‘s Michael Risberg (guitar/keys) and Georg Edert (drums) working together as a rhythm section and then some, “From Deep Within” sets a patient and ethereal tone from its own mellow beginning guitar line through the keys-and-residual-effects finish of the closing track “Cherry Trees.” Eldovar is not without its moments of impact, and “From Deep Within” shows that as well as its quiet unfolding leads to a more driving section of riffing, but melody is central and the overarching feel is less about how heavy it can be in any given stretch than what spaces it can use its time to explore. Ultimately, they leave little doubt it was the exploration that led the project to manifest as Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light, the album, in the first place.
Experienced listeners will pick out given parts as recognizably Elder or Kadavar — second cut “In the Way” embarks with what feels like a Lindemann-led homage to ’70s-era singer-songwriterism, semi-acoustic, before gradually shifting into a winding progressive rock that comes across very much in the vein of DiSalvo‘s style, whether it actually is or not — but doing so is the wrong approach. As demonstrated by “El Matador”‘s Pink–Floyd-in-the-sunshine ambience and the subsequent instrumentals “Rebirth of the Twins” and “Raspletin,” Eldovar is more about how the two component acts’ styles mesh than how they can be set next to each other.
It is an amalgam, not just a parallel presentation. That middle stretch of three songs — “El Matador” into “Rebirth of the Twins” into “Raspletin” — is fluid enough to become a hypnotic movement unto itself, entrancing in a way the more structured movements of “From Deep Within” and “In the Way” aren’t trying to be, and with the penultimate “Blood Moon Night” taking up a quarter of the total runtime at 11 minutes before “Cherry Trees” rounds out, the arc finds the darker turn alluded to in the title and fulfills a dynamic entirety all the more complete for it.
Even for arriving amid high expectations due to the personnel involved, these songs succeed in being something that is neither definitively Elder or Kadavar while adventuring into a place of sound that draws from both. “Blood Moon Night” alone boasts a full-length’s worth of motion, taking place along delineated stretches, first of lead guitar giving way to a chugging verse, then shifting into a mellow, King Crimson-y chorus and minimalist setup for the big turn toward Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light‘s heaviest stint. There’s a break with the dual drums highlighted — something that, should these two bands align again, one hopes they explore further — and the full-toned sweep begins again, consuming as a payoff perhaps for the relative pastoralism of “Rebirth of the Twins” and “Raspletin,” let alone its own early moments. The last two minutes hold over a keyboard line that maintains some tension, but are more about drawing down that surge of energy and giving an organic (if native to another world) transition into the piano line of “Cherry Trees.” Drumless, it puts the album’s last emphasis on a wash of melody, and drifts off not so much as an epilogue as a last fleeting stroke to complete the picture.
I won’t claim to know either act’s plans, whether or not Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light is a one-off or will be an ongoing or periodic endeavor. I doubt they know at this point, but it’s fascinating that the collaboration arrives as both bands involved have engaged their own work that might be regarded as departures. Kadavar‘s The Isolation Tapes (review here) was perhaps a more radical shift in approach than Elder‘s Omens (review here), but neither group has ever been content to do the same thing twice, even going back to their respective beginnings. Should there ever be a second Eldovar installment, its making would invariably be informed by what the six-piece have done already, branching off from their individual progressions and starting this new one.
That alone makes Eldovar – A Story of Darkness and Light singular, in that no matter what happens from this point onward — if anything, and maybe nothing — the moment they’ve captured in this initial joint effort can never be duplicated. Expanded on, yes — and if they want to grow this as a project, they have left themselves plenty of room to do so — but never repeated. For as humble as their stated goal might’ve been going into the studio together, their accomplishments here set a high standard for any who’d try to reach it. This is two of the most pivotal acts of their generation working as one unit, and the result of their labor surpasses even the novelty of that fact.
