Elizium (Expanded Deluxe Edition)

Beggars Arkive is happy to announce a double vinyl expanded deluxe reissue of FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM’S third highly acclaimed album ELIZIUM, released by Beggars Banquet in 1990. The album has been expanded onto a double LP for audio clarity and contains 4 bonus tracks. Brick red pressing. Recorded and produced by Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson, the audio is via analogue transfer to 96khz/24 bit by John Dent at Loud, with vinyl mastering by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road.

Formed in 1984, Fields of the Nephilim is the creation of vocalist and front man Carl McCoy. Highly influential, especially in the world of goth, but also within the metal and electronic genres, their legacy endures to this day. You can hear their influence on bands like Swans, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky, Wolves in The Throne Room, Behemoth and more. The band’s unique sound, an apocalyptic fusion of Victorian underworld meets Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western, had an appearance to match (wide-brimmed hats, long duster coats and cowboy boots, usually black and smothered in white flour as a substitute for dust), and set them apart from their contemporaries. Elizium is one of their most beautiful albums and considered by many to be their best. As The Quietus wrote, “it was both their most accessible and their most experimental work, concluding and consolidating the Nephilim’s five-year shamanic journey. Lead-off single and opening track ‘For Her Light’ featured a lengthy mid- section that anticipated the apocalyptic post-rock of Godspeed! You Black Emperor (unsurprisingly, it failed to chart), and the album featured some of the band’s hardest rock in the wah-overload of ‘Submission,’ as well as further incorporating dance elements – more successfully and organically than many of their peers, it must be said – on second single ‘Sumerland’.” Louder Sound also called “Sumerland” their “greatest ever track”.