DarkAngel, if you are going to get some Elend, I strongly recommend starting with Winds Devouring Men. The previous albums are quite similar to each other, though their third album, The Umbersum (which is semi-impossible to get nowadays) is the most polished one of the three first albums. However, the five year silence beetween Umbersum and WDM really has changed Elend a lot. The growls are almost gone, and the bias has moved more in the areas of dark orchestra, dark ambient and industrial music, while the previous albums were strictly classical. Of course the classical elements are still there, but they have just been spiced up a lot. I never liked the older Elend albums that much, but for me, WDM is just godlike. The production is top notch and the songs are as dark, depressing and psychotic as they can get, heh.
I suppose Elend has more appeal to fans of dark wave/dark ambient and melancholic classical than metalheads. I just happen to like all the previously mentioned genres, hehe.
For something really different and daring, I still recommend Tenhi. Even though they are purely neofolk/classical band, they have quickly earned a cult status among fininsh metalheads and other fans of dark music, and even have performed in Wacken if I remember correctly. All the lyrics are in finnish, so be warned hehe. The sound is slightly similar to the acoustic Ulver album, though far more advanced and mature. Just check for some reviews of Tenhi. I suppose it's quite hard to find even a single negative one.
And now, something completely different :
After over 40 years, the "Lake Bodom murderer" has been finally caught. Wonder how this will affect the lyrics of Children of Bodom. For those who don't yet know, the event, which Children of Bodom were named after, happened in the sixties and was the most notorious mass murder of the 20th century in Finland, and the murderer was believed never to be found. This has been quite a shocking news around here.
