Ea II

„EA” is a US-based funeral doom metal formation. Their homepage doesn’t say much about them besides the fact that they released their first album in 2006 under the title „Ea Taesse”, which was a notable success in underground circles. The subject of the present critique is their second release „Ea II”, featuring only two tracks rolling on through more than three quarter hours. As this already indicates, the material is anything but light.

You can hear fairly typical funeral doom metal here: low-tuned guitars, buzzing bass, basic drum themes, and all this played ultra-slowly. The music is based on a guitar-created monotonous wall of sound, rather than riffs. The vocals are deep, not very well-articulated grunting and sometimes whispering – by the way, both occur quite rarely.

The primary fault of the album is that it is pretty calculable, and that it offers virtually nothing beyond what we got used to in the genre. However, there is a promising piano intro in the beginning, some water drops and ambient effects in the first track, which are all quite good. I also like the more romantic piano play, backed with an impedimenting riff in the second song, and the temple-reminiscent organ too. But that’s rather thin in itself. While I claimed about the latest Ahab that it’s free of the meant-to-the-effect clichés typical of the genre, I cannot say the same about Ea. The pointless piano-hitting around the twelth minute is definitely irritating, and the piano / guitars combo stays too inconsistent and pseudo-avantgarde in the remainder too. It just leads nowhere.

For the time being I can’t honestly recommend this album but to those obsessed with the genre. There are some well-done parts in the music, but most of it is boring and mediocre. Or I’m just still not enough fond of the genre…

Originally written for: http://www.kronosmortus.hu