Au Ellai

With Au Ellai, Ea arrive at their third release, and they do this suprising us. It could be a bad or a good surprise, depending on opinions, but in my opinion this is a really good surprise. After the crushing power of Ea Taesse and the majestic atmospheres of Ea II, the band changes their coordinates and plays an album with many differences from the previous ones.

Which are these differences? First of all, listening to the opener track Aullu Eina you will hear that the sound is much more lighter than before. The walls of sounds are crumbled, and now there's a big presence of solistic guitar, which plays melodies almost never heard in the first two albums. The presence of the guitar solos is huge, but these are not guitar solos as we could hear in Iron Maiden: they're progressively enlarged to the whole song, slowly but constantly.
The drumming is still a bit elaborated, but much simplified than before. The music is still slow, very rich of atmospheric breaks, but this time they're not haunting and dark, but simply relaxing. This is a more harmonic music, differently from the dissonant riffs of Ea Taesse. The music has kept his "extreme" nature, but making it much more accessible to people who don't usually like Funeral Doom Metal. And this is a strong point, in my opinion. For Ea it could have been quite easy to publish "Ea III", but they chose to experiment and bring their music at a new level.

But let's keep on describing the album. Growling vocals, for example, are clearer and the sung parts have increased, passing to 25% of entire album. There are also some little parts of female vocals, beside the omnipresent choir pads. It could be hard, for someone, to bear the long instrumental parts, in the past.
The general feeling is of a music which has a bit abandoned "sacral" atmosphere and has come to a melodic and melancholic mood, which is clearly heard for example in the central part of Aullu Eina, with the slow guitar solo accompanied by a slow and tender piano. This doesn't mean that Ea are become an easy - listening band. I mean that Ea have built up a different identity, showing the world that they're able to change their music without disfigure it. It's not simple to do this.

Maybe this album will disorient people who were waiting for "Ea III", but I have to say that even this time Ea have produced a really intense and powerful album, which is worth of many and many listenings. For those who like experimentation in metal.