Title: Elbenjahre
Format: Cassette tape release on the Wulfrune Worxx label (France), cat ref WW971, with stock tape but full colour cover (and a very special 'guest artist'...)
Edition:Hand-numbered to 33 copies
Track Listing:
Side A
01. Welcome To Isengard
02. The Door To The Paths Of The Dead
03. Northwards
04. The Orc
05. The Fall Of Gil-Galad
06. Minas Morgul (demo)
07. The Return Of The Shadow
Side B
08. Dreamscape
09. Rise & Fall
10. Follow The Wind
11. Holy Metal
12. The Sword Of Revenge
13. From The Ashes (first take demo)
You may wonder at the purpose of "Elbenjahre". Well, let Nazgul inform you: it is, per the inlay, "a companion album to "Elbenglanz" - where Uruk Hai's legions of fans chose their favourite songs - this best-of collection features Hugin's own selection of personal highlights from the battle years 2004-2015!"
And thus each track above is hand-selected by the man himself in accordance with his own agenda and thoughts.
It immediately begged one question to Nazgul's tiny mind: why only the period from 2004? After all, Uruk Hai has been around in one form or other since 1999 so there are five years of untapped material here, including some seminal demos such as "Darkness", "Honour", "Elbentanz" and others. Most intriguing.
And then another question jumped up: why are there two demo versions of songs here, rather than the final versions? Does that imply Hugin preferred the demo track/first take version more than the final version, and if so why was the original recording superseded by an apparently lesser version?
Well the short answer to all of these questions is simply this: at the time that Hugin put this collection together these were the songs that appealed to him the most! And if you were to ask him to do the same thing again now, you'd probably get a slightly different list!!
There is a CD version of this release coming soon on the English label Aphelion Productions, who have of course released Uruk Hai material in the past, so that's definitely one to look out for and of course Nazgul will update Honour and Darkness accordingly when the disc lands in the Castle library.
That might be the time to get into the whole concordance of which song comes from what demo/album, which is always something of an intricate process to manage and one that - to my shame - is beyond my available time this month. Yes, Nazgul's real world existence is cutting into Honour and Darkness time once again, and may well do for a while this year as various changes take shape and cause me endless amounts of travelling and hard work. B'ah!
For now, then, let's rejoice in just the existence of this very limited edition tape on the ever-loyal Wulfrune Worxx label. An interesting fact gleaned from the inlay, by the way, is that there are two artists at work here, one of whom is Ruta Silders who did the front cover and the other is none other than Hugin's talented daughter, who did the inside cover. Clearly a family business going on over there in Linz.
Will we get another new post before the end of this month, you ask? Well, it's possible, but I wouldn't hold your breath...