The Painter's Palette

This album is incredible. There's no two ways about it; I'm not saying it appeals to everyone (one look at this page shows that!), but this is what jazz/metal fusion should sound like! Some bands seem to think that putting a nice dissonant chord in a song every now and again, or having more styles crammed into 6 minutes than there are fish in the sea, merits the label 'jazz-fusion'. No. Ephel Duath are progressive in perhaps the purest sense; uncompromising and experimental with not a care for what people will think about it.

First off, the instrumentation is incredible, the guitar, bass, drums, keys and trumpet (yes, thats right: jazz trumpet!) all work together to create a chimera of insane extremity. Discordant and dissonant riffs are thrown about like nobody's business but never once out of control, everything is structured and clearly has thought put into it; and there's no better example than the opener 'The Passage'. The album is odd in the fact that the band utilise both programmed and acoustic drums, both working to their own means. For example in the aforementioned track, the intro involves the guitars playing a polyrhythmic riff, accompanied by the trumpet playing a free-form solo. After a few seconds of this the song kicks in and shortly after this there's something of a programmed drum and bass break-down, followed by a disturbingly restrained section of clean guitar. I could describe the whole song, but I wont; you kind of get the picture. This is utter schizophrenic music.

The sheer audacity of both the song structures and use of instruments is astounding and goes to show that there are people willing to push the boat out nowadays! I've seen these guys play live and it was less of a 'gig' and more of an experience; the technical prowess was astounding, the bassist was absolutely incredible and it makes me wonder why more metal bands arn't embracing the bass as a standalone instrument as opposed to just adding some depth to the guitars. One interesting note is that for the recording of 'The Painter's Palette' they used a jazz drum teacher for the live acoustic drums, the logic behind this was to use somebody who had previously had nothing to do with metal , which may seem like an odd decision...that is until you hear the performance on this disc! Each instrument is an entity unto it's own right, nothing is spared it's moment in the spotlight, but before any thoughts of it becoming an excercise in self-indulgent wankery start appearing I should tell you that nothing is uneccessary here!

The vocals are a combination of hardcore-like screams from one vocalist, and clean vocals from the other. In an odd way, they suit the chaotic, almost free-form music, but in an oxymoronic sense in that the melodic clean vocals and screams are so contrasted and almost seem to be fighting for the sonic space they occupy but because of this illusory interplay they begin to fit together with repeat listenings. By no means is this easy to listen to and I can imagine a lot of listeners being unsatisfied by this element, but this is my review, and I happen to enjoy them myself.

I really don't want to say anything about the production other than 'it works'. Leave it at that.

This is not an album to relax to, nor is it background music; this is an album that demands to be listened to, at high volumes if possible. This collection of songs is not an excuse for a group of people to show off how well they can play their instruments, but a tight (yet chaotic) and carefully thought out series of incredible heavy jazz pieces, each provoking their own seperate emotions (see the notes on the cd-rom section of the disc for more on this) that will leave you open jawed and paralyzed from the mind down.

Schizophrenia never sounded so good.