Ea Taesse

The inspiration behind this album was intriguing enough: funereal doom metal based on the sacred texts of ancient civilisations with the lyrics all in the dead cultures' languages as reconstructed by archaeological / linguistic research. Unfortunately the CD sleeve gives no information as to the language/s Ea use on the CD and which texts plus we don't have an English language translation of the lyrics so listeners get absolutely no idea what Ea are singing about and what message the ancients might have for us. It's necessary for us to rely completely on the music for some idea of what this message might be. For me anyway, it's hard not to think that Ea might be stringing us along the way their fellow Americans Velvet Cacoon did a year or so ago with their dieselharp guitar, the Earth Liberation Front front and the faked early recordings.

Well, to the music ... the three tracks are long and they're similar enough that they are like movements in a very long drone doom metal opus. Opening track "Laeleia" sets the tone for the album with very slow and sombre doom metal featuring drawn-out droning guitar riffs of sandpaper quality but not especially deep. The bass guitar follows the rhythm guitar closely so the drummer is left to improvise on his tom-toms as he likes, which is an interesting touch: it adds an element of tribalism or barbarity if you like. There are other instruments too that flesh out "Laeleia": piano in parts, organ, some pure tinkling tones that suggest a celesta (a mini-piano which produces very light sweet tones) and spacey ambient synth notes at the end. And of course there are the lyrics, delivered in a deep rattling death metal vocal with accompaniment from heavenly choral aahh-ing.

Track 2, "Mea Ta Souluola" (with apologies to Napero, these track titles look like Finnish to me!) carries on in a similar funeral vein: minimal repetitive guitar drones, choral voices (keyboard-generated, I'd say), droning organ and that drummer banging away on his hard tom-toms. It all sounds very grand and bombastic and the music is constantly building up and up and up with all that repetition and the addition of more effects like orchestral brass instruments effects. But it's hard to feel any kind of emotional connection (even a negative emotional connection) and I can easily imagine some listeners who are not used to this kind of drone doom metal might feel they're being trundled over by juggernaut teams of slaves and oxen carting heavy stones over to the next pyramid construction site.

On we go: the title track continues on in a deterministic, almost triumphal way. Super-deep guttural vocals arise as if from a murky black tar-pit and are hard to make out; there are airy female vocals as well in the background. High-pitched melodic lead guitar leads the way for much of this track. Towards the end, some unexpected quiet passages introduce a sorrowful ambience which carries right to the very end.

My impression of "Ea Tasse" is that though the musicians are very good at what they do, they don't seem to have thought right through this concept and what they could do with it, and so the music is narrowly focussed on the grandiose, bombastic angle with maybe a hidden lesson if any on how even the greatest and richest civilisation eventually passes into dust as any student of ancient history should know. The whole recording comes across as a marathon endurance drone trundle which is very remote in feeling and any human aspect is completely overwhelmed by the musical padding that builds up. The structure of the music depends on repetition so all this build-up keeps on going and seems to pass straight from one track into the next with no clear climax or release of tension that would differentiate the individual tracks.

And come to think of it, the concept behind "Ea Tasse" isn't that original: Sunn0))) had a track on their "White2" album released some years ago on which Attila Csihar was crooning verses selected from an ancient Indian epic The Rig-Veda in the original Sanskrit language.