Bull Elephant - Created From Death
Eat Lead And Die Music
Progressive Sludge
8 songs (40:12)
Release year: 2020
Bandcamp
Reviewed by Goat

A scant nine months after their impressive debut hit like, well, a zombie Lovecraftian elephant at full charge, the anonymous collective behind Bull Elephant are back with part two of their epic tale. As before, the story is far too silly/awesome to be skipped over, said elephant having been resurrected in human form and placed in the care of a renegade ape. And the variety of genres played with on their debut is just as broad, the opening title track having more of a classic doom swing to the initial riffing before a post-sludge build, proceeding to throw in everything from black-thrash gallops to proggy melodic meandering! Just as with the preceding album, the band are skilled at mixing these to the point where it never feels avant-garde or wacky, particularly thanks to solidly rocking pieces like Oneiromantic Rites that show off the guitars and sense of melody as opposed to compositional variation. And each song has enough of an identity to stand out, such as Cult of the Black Sun Nemesis which has a more upbeat and heavy metal tone to it that carries over into Last Defilement, itself a blastbeating rocker.

It's hard to pick strong or weak tracks, as the album is pretty consistently enjoyable be it the briefer, thrashy Perverted Science or longer, more post-rock influenced Escape to the Arctic. As a whole the album probably leans a little closer to more mellow pastures than Bull Elephant's debut, and is possibly a little less enjoyable thanks to no longer being as novel. The greatest barrier to enjoyment probably remains the vocals, which are all over the place and move from growls to shrieks and unearthly clean singing, often all in the same song. They're far from bad, but can take a little getting used to even for those used to doom; Bull Elephant's influences stretch far and wide. And some songs, particularly in the earlier half of the album, feel like they end a little soon and are in service of the album/story as a whole rather than being solid individual songs. Still, these are nitpicks overall; Bull Elephant ensure that each track has plenty of tremendous riffing, and those who enjoyed last year's album will find much to like here. Apparently the final chapter of this trilogy is due next year, and on the basis of this strong release it's worth looking forward to.

Killing Songs :
Cult of the Black Sun Nemesis, Last Defilement, Escape to the Arctic
Goat quoted 77 / 100
Other albums by Bull Elephant that we have reviewed:
Bull Elephant - Bull Elephant reviewed by Goat and quoted 80 / 100
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