Ephel Duath "Pain Necessary to Know" (Earache)
By Lucas Salg
Wednesday. Jan 11, 12:53 AM
Outstanding jazz metal madness, though a little bit too maddening.

Italy’s answer to The Dillinger Escape Plan (as referenced in their bio approximately 47 million times), Ephel Duath are a jazz-metal behemoth masterminded by guitar wizard Davide Tiso (with a rotating cast of supporting players). Although the bio insists on calling them “black metal” and really plays up the “extreme” aspects of their music, Ephel Duath actually rest solidly on the jazz side of the fence. A more apt comparison might be old Candiria with no rapping. The constant free-form breakdowns, stop/start dynamics, and lengthy clean passages are the heart and soul of this band, not their occasional lapses into metal territory. Even when the heavy parts come rumbling in, they seem soft around the edges, never losing sight of the jazz aesthetic.

All the players are talented, especially drummer Davide Piovesan, who at 47 can really tear shit up. I hope I’m still hitting as hard as this motherfucker in 20 years. His timing is amazing, and he manages to pull off constant fills and segues without shoving his technical virtuosity down your throat. Chops and subtlety: a rare and effective combination in metal. Too bad he has already left the band (according to the bio, by claiming “economic, humanistic, and artistic problems”). They have pared down to one vocalist, screamer Luciano Lorusso, whose fuzzy roar is just abrasive enough to keep things tense, but more subdued (and palatable) than most throat-shredders. And the sonic palette provided by Davide Tiso’s guitar is colorful, varied, and impressive throughout.

The major problem here is that Ephel Duath, like Candiria and The Dillinger Escape Plan, suffer from major ADHD. The “jazz influence,” I’m afraid, has become code word in extreme music circles for “bits of brilliance stitched together in four-minute lumps.” I can’t help but wonder how much better this album would be if there were some songs here to grab onto. They suggest Pain Necessary to Know is a nine-song “suite” meant to flow together as one piece of music, but even that claim is disingenuous, because “flow” is exactly what this style of music, at its core, is avoiding. Tellingly, the best moments on the album occur when the band focuses on a passage or idea for more than 10 seconds at a time.

What we have here is an impressive cast of musicians jamming impressively, with only the track names to delineate where one “song” ends and the next begins. On a technical level it’s brilliant, but Ephel Duath could kick so much more ass if they would incorporate actual songwriting. The Dillinger Escape Plan moved toward this idea with Miss Machine, and it paid off. I think other bands of their ilk would really do well to progress beyond highly skilled improvisation to craft real, honest-to-goodness songs.

One last thing: to prevent evil music critics from ripping the songs to mp3, Earache decided to re-format the promo disc into 99 tracks, in essence splitting each song into multiple 20-second shards. What a bullshit, boneheaded move. With an album as free-form as this, it makes it pretty hard to figure out what the hell song you’re actually listening to. And since I couldn’t put the damn thing on my iPod, I had to buy a discman to listen to it while walking around, which meant that if I wanted to just listen to track nine, I had to hit the skip button 90 FUCKING TIMES. Earache, if you’re listening: your bands deserve better than having their music chopped into pieces. Plenty of other labels, big and small, trust critics with the real thing. Knock that shit off: you’re not doing your label or the band any favors.
www.ephelduath.net
www.earache.com

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Lucas Salg

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