Customer Reviews

Pain Necessary to Know

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you were surprised by the originality of The Painter's Palette, Ephel Duath's previous release, wait until you give their new platter a full listen. This is a mindblowing and incredibly well crafted album. Davide Tiso has put together a new disc that is at times deliberately pretentious yet everything is so meticulously expressed and performed that there is nothing to complain about. From the schizophrenic mood prevalant on the entire album to the dark and swift song arrangements, Pain Necessary to Know is a very powerful statement that treads the dangerous line between fluid jazz and skull-crushing metal. Though there are fewer brass instruments this time around, the band's jazz explorations go far deeper utilising every element the genre has to offer and blending them together with the band's trademark scream vocal ferocity and avant-garde approach.

As its predecessor, the new album is also a disc that could be likened to Mr Bungle, Zappa, and John Zorn. The music presented here is still very spontaneous and littered with ever-changing drum and bass patterns. Furthermore, there is an evident Dillinger Escape Plan touch prevalent that renders Pain Necessary to Know even more immediate and aggressive. The amount of clean vocals has noticeably decreased; actually they would be almost nonexistent had it not been for "I Killed Rebecca", a jazz drum charged piece with siren-like wailing guitars, harrowing whispers during a dark acoustic passage that precedes a very cluttered and multi-layered instrumental section. The song even has some industrial tendencies offered in small segments - incredibly experimental to say the least. All songs are punctuated with a cold, desolate atmosphere; the churning guitar chords quickly develop into explosive walls of sound along with a drummer that is exceptionally talented when it comes to filling the songs with crashing cymbal sounds and remarkable polyrhythms. It's a shame that Davide Piovesan has decided to leave the band after recording his parts. Let's hope the guys find a competent replacement, however unlikely it seems at this point.

The bass guitars on the album are equally compelling. From the blasting bass attack on the oddly guitar-tuned "Vector, Third Movement" to the ever-present funky lines on "Pleonasm", Fabio Fecchio has truly outdone himself. He is showcasing every aspecting of his abilities, and has a great ear for arrangement as no single note is wasted or comes off excessive. Always in perfect harmony with the drums, he knows when to show restraint or dive into a frenzied instrumental section that, despite its overly challenging nature, sounds more palatable than his prior works. Needless to say, the main man behind Ephel Duath, guitarist Davide Tiso, makes his presence felt all over the album. Tiso fuses some of the songs with weird guitar tunings and effects but disguises them with subtle synth layers or a blare of brass instruments. He doesn't necessarily explore long, drawn-out guitar solos; he is more forthright this time. Yet, he never fails to inject each and every song with bizarre timings and odd rhythmic groupings, drawing from a vast Zappa library along the way. The eerie chord progressions on "Few Stars, No Refrain and A Cigarette" offer a slower and sweeter guitar tone, rather than single-minded guitar fury. There is a brilliant percussion beat going on deep down in the mix covered with echoing guitars, a circular bass solo, and intense kick drums. Towards the end of the tune, Tiso's guitars spirial into bone-crushing and laser-precise minor chords that are difficult to follow on first listen. It's simply astonishing.

Of special note is the "Vector" trilogy, a long-form composition divided into three parts and scattered through the disc in random order. Try listening to these parts one after the other and if it doesn't impress you beyond words then I don't know what will. The middle chapter, "Vector, Second Movement", is the only instrumental number on the album, and quite possibly the album's most atmospheric track. From dissonant chords to frantic jazz drums and a very non-Ephel Duath-ish middle section, the song is sealed with a happy-go guitar melody that is characterized by classic Zappa playfulness. The album has a running time of merely 38 minutes, but each minute overflows with intense musicianship and interesting ideas, so most fans should be pleased. If you are also an Ephel Duath fan, be excited. Be very excited. They have returned with a mind melting paradigm.

The good news is, this album has some of the most pleasing tones I've ever heard from any band, anywhere. The attitude of the guitar tone and recorded drum sounds are top-notch, perhaps even unparalleled.

The bad news is, it's nowhere near as good an album as "Painter's Pallette," which really showed promise as a cutting-edge art-metal band in the making.

The best tracks offered here are "Crystalline Whirl," "I Killed Rebecca," and "New Disorder."

Honestly, I rarely listen to this disc, but I'm also glad I own it. Despite its shortcomings, it's well worth having if you like this sort of off-kilter aggression.

Three stars is a conservative rating. If i had my druthers, I'd probably rate it 3.75.

More genre-bending insanity from Europe...I'm not sure what woodwork all of these great avant-garde musicians are crawling out of over there, but I am enjoying the results. Ephel Duath are an Italian band displaying a unique and bizarre brand of death metal/acid-jazz fusion extreme music which is oddly capable of being both subtle and precarious at the same time. A typical Ephel Duath song sounds like some sort of weird graduate-level thesis in music theory performed with a stand-in death metal vocalist who thought his voice wasn't abrasive enough and decided to add a distortion pedal. The super-harsh vocal style diminshes the results a bit; I think that a change in vocal style might do them good, but whatever, this album seems primarily instrumental anyway, and quite amazing! All the players weave their individual jazz and metal tangents together into a constantly moving, unpredictable tapestry full of stops, starts, detours, and controlled chaos. The percussion really stood out for me....I think I heard everything from chimes to washboards and maracas on this disc. Seriously, the playing is just spectacular on this album; tracks like "Crystalline Whirl" display stunning musicianship, with unexpected changes and alterations of volume, mood, and instrumentation coming at you from all sides. It's all over the place, but still manages to be coherent enough to engage the listener....fascinating stuff, but not for the faint of heart.

It's so frustrating when such talented musicians make such underachieving music. I had high expectations for this album (perhaps unfairly so) but Pain Necessary to Know falls way below them.

Ephel Duath have clearly demonstrated their intent to produce a full-on jazz metal assault. The Dillinger Escape Plan comparison is unavoidable. The album is characterised by dissonant rhythms and jarring riffs. And herein lies the problem. Davide Tiso appears to have paid little attention to the flow of songs - those intangible qualities like atmosphere and mood are non-existent. The songs seem utterly aimless and random, even for jazz standards.

The loss of Davide Tolomei's clean vocals don't help. Luciano Lorusso George is quite possibly the worst vocalist in metal. His atonal screams not only fail to add to the music, they actually ruin it. My favourite Ephel Duath song, from Painter's Palette, is called Praha. There's two reasons for this - firstly, it's instrumental so I don't have to listen to Neanderthal shrieking. And secondly, it flows. It sets a mood, and explores an idea, whilst maintaining the jazzy shifts and integrity of the musicianship. Learn from this Ephel Duath!

They also appear better at the mellow stuff than the heavy stuff. That is evident on their last two albums (their first, Phormula was brilliant, but was essentially black metal and can't be compared to anything they've done since).

So: lose the vocalist, write some SONGS instead of just random music and return to the Ephel Duath I used to love.

Three stars only because the bass and drums are incredible.

"Pain Necessary to Know" has been described as an avante garde, experimental melding of jazz and metal. My interest was immediately piqued when I read about it. This description is accurate, but it doesn't really paint a fair picture of this musical work.

The problem with this music is that there is absolutely no flow to the songs. This isn't so much a collection of songs as it is a succession of 30 second musical fragments. One would be hard pressed to find a segment of this disk in which music continues for a solid minute, without a second of complete silence somewhere in the middle. It's poor songcraft to paste together riffs with a drum fill, but Ephel Duath doesn't even do us that courtesy. I'm fine with spastic music (DEP's "Calculating Infinity" is fantastic), but with "Pain Necessary to Know" I feel like I'm flipping channels. It is extremely irritating to listen to music that changes direction so frequently. The separation of the album into 9 tracks seems entirely arbitrary since each "song" is comprised of a series of disconnected sections.

Normally, an album like this wouldn't mean much to me. I'd simply sell the album back, and push it out of my mind. But my frustration comes from the fact that literally EVERY one of these musical fragments could be the seed of a truly fantastic and innovative piece of music. If only Ephel Duath would take some of their great ideas and develop them!

It's really a shame when such a talented and creative band completely neglects song structure and flow in the name of being "avante garde" or unique. I really wish I could like this album, but it's literally unlistenable for me. If the fragmented structure doesn't sound too bad to you, by all means give this a shot. I hope it doesn't bother you as much as it does me, because this album is full of brilliant music.