Ephel Duath

The Painter’s Palette (Earache)
by Tim Den

Like a vision of doomsday or a prophecy fulfilled, Ephel Duath have delivered us into the blossom of a terrifyingly new experience, one that lays ruin to all preconceived notions of metal while forging the remnants into a unrecognizable entity. In simpler terms, the sounds you hear eminating from The Painter’s Palette will scorch your musical foundations, only to build a newer, far more interesting one in its place. Combining free-style jazz, drum’n’bass, post-hardcore, and black metal, Ephel Duath have created an album Mr. Bungle could’ve made had they written an album using jazz musicians who had never heard of metal (which, incidentally, Ephel Duath has). The Painter’s Palette is a dense swamp swimming with shapeshifting guitar lines and mercurial time changes, stuffing re-entry style/white-washed screams next to soft crooning in a context that not only makes sense, but shows you a whole new way to listen to metal. This is the sound of a musical genre reaching its next plataeu, similar to how Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come blew the doors off post-hardcore. The Painter’s Palette will be the bible in this new age.
(43 West 38th St. 2nd Fl. New York, NY 10018)