The Painter's Palette

The label jazz-metal seems to get thrown around a lot. But a few odd time signatures does not equal jazz. The Painter's Palette is one of the very few to merit the label, and in fact could probably be considered, structurally, a pure jazz fusion album. The only thing that takes it away from such a classification is the obviously "metal" aesthetic, ie guitar tones, production and the screamed vocals. But one could conceivably re-record the album with different instruments and end up with a pure jazz fusion album.

Thus, we're not talking about spastic time changes, although the album is indeed rhythmically very complex. The essence of what makes this a jazz album lies with the interplay of the various instruments, which evokes a more sinister version of Mahavishnu Orchestra. The languid guitar work is stunningly inventive and the bassist threatens to steal the show with a Jaco Pastorius-like display of flair. As for the drummer, it was no surprise to hear that he was in fact a jazz drummer with no background in metal.

Unfortunately this is a flawed masterpiece, and two Godzilla-testicle sized flaws there are. First, the vocals. The clean vocalist is pretty good, and his rich smooth voice blend well with the style of almost-metal-almost-jazz. But then they had to go and destroy all the lyrical richness of the music by employing the most goddamn awful atonal screamo vocals imaginable. What makes it even worse is that I'm not sure if they were even intended to be screamo type vocals, given the band's black metal past. They could well just be the most tuneless, expressionless, painfully grating black metal vocals I've ever heard.

Secondly, the album is too jarring; there is too much Dillinger Escape Plan influence, without the manic energy DEP possess. Now, I need to be careful here, because I don't want to give the impression that the album is technicality for technicality's sake, because it's not. Nor is it generally like DEP and their ilk. The freeform riffs and amorphous rhythms flow well, at least until the band decides they want to go all brutal. Then in come the horrid vocals, all the instruments assault your ears at once, and all the atmosphere created before disappears.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the album's best song is an instrumental and contains no metal touches at all. 'Praha' is an incredible piece of songwriting, one of the best instrumentals I've ever heard. It is pure jazz, yet dark, and retains a palpable sense of emotion and intrigue which is lacking in most jazz. The guitar solo is so expressive and lyrical and says so much more than a voice ever could.

Ultimately the album does not know what it wants to be. This is a daring album, no question, but for some unknown reason Ephel Duath did not feel they could go the whole way with the sound they had been playing with. A genuinely dark and heavy jazz album could have been created without the aforementioned aural violation, but instead we are left with an album which will satisfy neither fans of that jarring screamo/mathcore rubbish, or fans of jazz.