Davide Tiso, the brains behind Ephel Duath, has three new and experienced collaborators for this EP in the form of Karyn Crisis, Steve DiGiorgio and Marco Minnemann. DiGiorgio alone has played in 20 or so bands including Testament and Death. Mr Tiso gets through a lot of collaborators. Like his strange avant-garde, experimental, progressive and conceptual music, Mr Tiso himself is mysterious. I find he interests me as much as his music. I sense that he is driven by his art and vision. You either commit yourself to it or you don’t. I met him once and was struck by his aloofness and intensity. That was before “Through My Dog’s Eyes” (2009), which had an accompanying DVD where in grey rooms and between decaying walls, he gives great insight into his artistic world. To do that was surprising and by his standards abnormal. But then the word “normal” does not feature in the dictionary of Mr Tiso or Ephel Duath.
“On Death and Cosmos” comprises three tracks of six minutes. The theme is spirit, abandonment and self-transformation. Ms Crisis growls her way through a personalised agony, relating of darker spaces and isolation. “Black Prism”, the opening track, is like an ode to pain. It has that morbid and discordant pattern which characterise Ephel Duath from “The Painter’s Palette” (2003) onwards but dispenses with the eccentricity and mind-blowing changes of style of “Pain Necessary to Know” (2005). This is Mr Tiso at the core. Moody, sad and threatening, the track progresses creepily. It’s held together by a distinctive guitar rhythm providing momentary colour in a bleak and negative landscape and a steady, black metal style drum beat. The dark ambiance continues with “Raqia”, which starts with minimalist doom before sludging its way through a typically nightmarish piece. Avant-garde as ever, this reminds me a bit of 1970s style psychedelia but presented in a deadened jazz metal way. It drives on but never in a satisfying way, deliberately so as it reflects on the immense emptiness described in the lyrics.
“I owe my balance to death and cosmos” croaks Ms Crisis. “Stardust Rain” has a disturbingly mixed palette. Tiso’s guitar line breaks into an interesting and captivating melody, but it’s one which is torpid and even chaotically independent just as the lyrics are dark. The whole thing’s sinister. Melancholy emerges but the overall feel, courtesy of the vocals, is of relentless desperation.
“On Death and Cosmos” is heavy going and complex but what else were we to expect. The mysterious Mr Tiso champions discomfort and gloom in his oblique way, taunting us here and there with recognisable musical forms. Above all he remains as creative as ever.
(7 / 10 Andrew Doherty)
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