Ephel Duath - Pain Necessary to Know

circus_brimstone

Forest: Sold Out
Jul 5, 2003
5,154
13
38
41
Indiana
Ephel Duath – Pain Necessary to Know
Elitist Records / Earache Records – MOSH918 – October 31st, 2005
By Jason Jordan

ephelduath.jpg


Downright amazing is the best description for Pain Necessary to Know, at least that’s what I think. Anyhow, the ever-changing Ephel Duath have returned with their first entry since The Painter’s Palette blew everyone away in 2003, and though the transformations can be deemed minimal, they’re still apparent. But, believe you me that the quality has skyrocketed when compared/contrasted to the band’s previous engagements.

While The Painter’s Palette left me intrigued and taken with a couple of the songs, Pain Necessary to Know sucked the breath right out of my lungs. The jazziness is still hanging out on this record, but has diminished in frequency along with the clean vocals. The properties that have increased, though, multiply Ephel Duath’s worth twofold. For instance, the synthesizers are brilliantly used: listen to the bells in “New Disorder” and “Crystalline Whirl,” and then tell me you didn’t achieve orgasm. Yeah, they’re that good. Also, Piovesan (drums) sounds less intent on providing a jazz backdrop than he was on the group’s most recent past effort, in The Painter’s Palette. The stop/start technique is utilized a whole lot this time around, which means that those irked by the constant breakage of continuity may dislike this heavily. At any rate, copious instrumental passages (parts of “Vector, Third Movement” for example) are, like, totally awesome! Clocking in at forty minutes total, Ephel Duath gauged the average listener’s attention span perfectly with this disc.

Mainly, it seems as if the guys were able to shed the mishmash of jazz and metal – that plagued their immediate predecessor – in favor of welding the two together convincingly. This isn’t so much a jazz metal recording as it is a hefty, avant-garde exemplification. While Ephel Duath don’t exactly eschew traditional elements in favor of spastic, nonsensical characteristics, Pain Necessary to Know is a necessary listen. Hell it’s a must-buy, just because it’s one of the best original works of this year. As an aside, even though they don’t sound like one another at all, I simply have to recommend Frantic Bleep’s The Sense Apparatus to folks searching for other artists in tune with spot-on experimentation.

9/10

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I thought The Painter's Palette was infinitely histrionic in both approach and exectuion--truly a bad album. We'll see about this one.