The Painter's Palette

There are not many metal bands I know out there that integrate jazz fusion so well into their sound as do Italian progressive metal band Ephel Duath. Although they have been first brought to my attention as a black metal band, their second album 'The Painter's Palette' shows very little of this style, instead going towards a very forward thinking style of jazz metal that sounds often like a progression of what Atheist was doing in the early nineties. A highly inventive and quirky band, the band finds an energetic masterpiece with 'The Painter's Palette', that reinvents their sound greatly into something altogether unique.

Ephel Duath splits their sound evenly between abrasive metal and a more melodic, jazz- infused sound. To the band's great benefit, they manage to put the two together seamlessly, making a chaotic barrage flow into a classy jazz break as if it came naturally. Although Ephel Duath do both sides of their sound with great skill and talent, it is indeed the jazzy side of their music that distinguishes them and makes 'The Painter's Palette' an underground masterpiece. To make the jazz jump out even more, there are even a nice number of trumpet solos that almost make one forget that they are listening to what is otherwise an extreme metal record.

On the more metal side of things, Ephel Duath relies on some screams that sound more like they come out of metalcore than anything else, but noisy guitar textures and some beautifully organic drumming makes it all sound as if it is in place. The harsh vocals of Luciano Lorusso are nothing special, but help accentuate some of the album's heavier moments. Where the vocal work really compliments the sound however is with the clean vocals of Davide Tolomei, who takes point for most of the band's melodies. The melodies are not normally particularly catchy or memorable, sounding all over the place. For Ephel Duath though, it works fairly well, and instead the memorable effect of 'The Painter's Palette' is shifted over to the instruments, which are all not only performed, but also produced beautifully.

Ephel Duath's 'The Painter's Palette' is an album that takes a while to grow, but with each passing listen, the experience does ferment into a level of appreciation that I can only associate with a masterpiece. An essential album for jazz-metal fusion.

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.

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.

Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe the crazy sound laid down by Italy’s Ephel Duath. Davide Tiso, guitarist, songwriter, and the only original Ephel Duath member left has brought in an entirely new line-up for THE PAINTER’S PALETTE, and with it comes an entirely new, and even stranger sound.

As Ephel Duath have bothered to release an album this boring, it would only seem fair that I return the favour and trash it properly, but I simply cannot bring myself to it. Instead of the “evil circus music and death metal” from the first album, Ephel Duath have gone totally jazz-fusion, with but a tattered shred of metal remaining. Scream-core vocals, a blare of brassy trumpets, funky bass lines, and many jazz breakdowns

It would seem that Davide Tiso rounded up some of his favourite albums, probably looking something like the entire catalogs of Cynic, Gordian Knot, Miles Davis, Arcturus, Green Carnation, Opeth, and Porcupine Tree. Then, he must have thrown each album simultaneously into the CD player, put the entire mess on shuffle, and tried to replicate the cacophony. (Mind you, I am a big fan of Cynic, Miles Davis, Arcturus, and Opeth)

My fucking god. The prog elitists are going to shit their pants over this as being the most “Ground breaking, breathaking, innovative, blah, blah, blah...I’m gagging on Opeth’s cock here.”

It’s not that I am averse to jazz, prog, or experimental music; it’s the fact that Ephel Duath cannot wrote a coherent fifteen consecutive seconds to save their lives. If THE PAINTER’S PALETTE were stripped down to its pure jazz-fusion elements, I would enjoy it a hell of a lot more. I mean, there are some awesome jazzy breaks strewn here and there. Instead, the amalgamation of the totally unrelated styles makes this album 46 minutes of unlistenable hell.

To make the torture worse, the label issued me a promotional copy on which each of the 9 tracks is broken down into smaller tracks (though it is still a complete album) ranging from ten seconds to about a minute in length as an attempt to prevent piracy. Guess what? Didn’t work. I’m pissed off that I had to waste valuable bandwidth to download the fixed complete, consecutive songs, and that the chopped promo copy will not play in my truck’s CD player, where I listen to most of my metal while commuting to school. I can’t write off Elitist Records completely, as the young Earache Records offshoot label has already put out great releases by young bands Rakoth and Forest Stream.

Speaking of school, my greatest enjoyment of this album came at about 3am while studying. In my sleep-deprived state while I was listening to this album and reading a 40-page reference paper (for the record, one can only review the synthesis of poly-amine organic hydrocarbons as novel anti-tumor agents for so long before insanity sets in), when I was struck by a brilliant idea. I decided to put the album, and all 98 of its chopped-up tracks, on shuffle play. I still can’t determine if the random play made the album more or less coherent.

Though only 46 minutes in length, this piece is so awful that it seems like it will never end. I would rather self-administer a gallon-size enema bag and pass out, quivering, on the floor than experience the torture of Ephel Duath again. Even my dog hates this.

(originally written by me for www.metal-rules.com, September, 2003)