Band:ELISABETHA
Title: Gesprochene Passagen (Spoken Passages)
Format: This is a silver CDr in white sleeve containing just spoken word passages for 3 Elisabetha songs. A demo CD only intended for use between band members
Edition: Presumed to be this single copy
Track Listing:
01. Einleitung: Visionen & Fieberträume
02. Unheilvolle Kreaturen im Mondlicht (Erster Blutzyklus)
03. Huren Dracula's (Zweiter Blutzyklus)
One of those odd things hidden away at the back of the Castle Library, this demo CDr was clearly an internal mechanism used between band members of Elisabetha to mix the spoken lyrics for 3 songs with another disc containing the music. Something of an oddity, though of interest to long-term Honour and Darkness readers one hopes, and originating from the depths of W.A.R. Studios in a parcel from Hugin many moons ago.
It's rather an odd thing listening to 3 long spoken word pieces in a foreign langauge with no musical accompaniment. Booming deep lyrics intoned with a solemn, almost religious style of delivery - heavily spiced with echo and reverb - gives one the impression of being in a German Cathedral during Matins, and the urge to bellow 'Amen' at various points becomes almost overwhelming....
The three songs in question stem from the Elisabetha album "Und Wirklichkeit erfüllt die Seele wieder" which dates to 2004 for the original Black Attakk CD pressing, and 2009 for the much later Wulfrune Worxx tape reissue. Handily, we know from the inlay itself when these parts were recorded - 2 February, 2003.
Broadly translated, the 3 songs in question are called 'Introduction: a fever of Visions & Dreams', 'Sinister Creatures in the Moonlight (First Blood Cycle)', and 'Dracula's Whores (Second Blood Cycle)'. This was an album influenced by the writing of Bram Stoker, and some of his lyrics were also used in the songs on the album.
A recent stock-take-cum-spring clean at the Castle has rediscovered a few odd promo and work-in-progress demo CDs from various bands in Hugin's extensive repertoire, so Nazgul will add one into the mix here and there just for fun ... and after all, there's precious little chance of anything new from bands such as Elisabetha emerging after all this time, so these oddments could be the last 'new' items we get a chance to share.
Mind you, in an exciting development, in amongst these odds and sods was another innocent looking CDr which turned out to be another long-lost, never before heard or seen one-off project from the hands of our Austrian hero! Nazgul has featured a few of these over the years but who'd have thought after all these years another one could possibly exist?! Well it does, and watch this space for the grand unveiling soon....