Band:	Ellipsis
Album:	The Grace Decapitated
Style:	Symphonic progressive metal
Release date:	October 29, 2009
A review by:	Jeff

01. Sun Machine
02. The Grace Decapitated
03. Spectral And Terrified
04. Wine And Blood
05. Absynthe Theories
06. Beat My Flesh
07. Alchemykillbomb
08. My Love Destruction
09. The Great Massacre
10. Your Soul Is Mine

If you would like to know the name of a French band which never disappoints me, I would have to talk about Ellipsis. It's been a while now that I follow the work of this combo from Grenobles in the south east of France and every time that I have to review one of their new album, I can only talk about success and good music. What's the recipe of their great music, how these young guys play such good Metal? The answer is simple, just have a look on their last album The Grace Decapitated and you'll understand?

The best word to describe this new release or even more, the music of Ellipsis in general is originality! It's really hard to find similar Metal bands to Ellipsis and albums after albums they always find the way to do something new and even better! The last album was really dark and clearly influenced by Doom Metal, the new one is a lot more "Power" but in a good way, the band being nearer of Nevermore than HammerFall if you see what I mean. Talking about Nevermore the voice of Emmanuelson is more and more in the vein of the one of Warrel Dane and it gives, of course, a certain charm to the music. The Grace Decapitated is composed of great riffs and nice melodies, the album is dark and really black but never lacks of power and energy. To sum up, The Grace Decapitated is a really good album of Progressive dark Power Metal and features all what we want when we listen to one of those Metal genres. It's complex with lot of changes, breaks, little original melodies everywhere but with big US Power riffs. The Grace Decapitated is a perfect mix of the best influences that the band always had.

No problem with the recording, the performance of the musicians is solid and the voice of Emmanuelson is getting better with time. The album features some guest likes Julie of Hydrogyn or Yves of Nightmare, this is a really well produced record with even such kind of little additions to "add" something else to the record. No doubt that The Grace Decapitated confirms all what I used to think about Ellispsis, they should be a lot more respected and famous in France but also outside of our frontiers.

Maybe that Ellispsis music is not really popular because it's not so easy of access but to be honest I don't think that it's harder to understand it than the one of Gojira. It's probably just a matter of chance or promotion, I don't know but obviously this band should deserve a lot more of interest from the metalheads. If you're into complex Progressive powerful music, The Grace Decapitated should interest you, really you'll be surprised and understand why I claim that Ellipsis is one of the best Metal combo from France.