SALVADOR AGUINAGA II (7/10)

It's been a long time since the last time I listened to EPHEL DUATH. And even then I cannot remember their previous sound. This year they released "Hemmed by Light, Shaped by Darkness", modest but overall interest well kept. Their sound, to say the least, is a bit quirky. It's mal-structured but in a non-chaotic form. They achieve this level of mediocrity to subtle excellence or messy to a quiet flow to complexity reached. After I finished the album, I wasn't left disappointed but I was satisfied either. EPHEL DUATH indeed gave their all to release an album that'll please their inner creativity and us as fans are left to decipher the piece before us.

The main factor that causes a bit of offset is the vocalist. Strange, I thought the vocalist was male and at the very least a female was a guest vocalist. But it seems the vocalist is Karyn Crisis (I might be misinformed). Anyway, the vocalist has this style that you'd expect a well-grounded black metal vocalist to have. But some unexpected event, (i.e.) a Sludge Metal band, desperately needed a vocalist to fill in for their set. Seeing as the band had no time, Crisis, did the altruistic thing and gave them a hand. So what we have here is a black metal vocalist winging a sludgy approach. It comes off alright most of the time but other times it doesn't quite fit in or the vocalist is getting ahead of themselves.

A bigger fallacy would be if you replaced Marco Minneman with any mediocre drummer. You remove him and the whole album becomes bland/falls apart. The guitar work is not impressive at least not enough to keep your attention for what almost seems like an hour. And having to listen to the guitar and vocalist simultaneously is a pain unless you have some sort of catalyst and that's exactly where Minneman saves the day. Not only did he save us from what seemingly looked like a disaster but he did so in a way that was considerate of what was already conceived. He does an impressive job to make every second previous.

THE JUNGLE GUY (7/10)

Some bands nowadays are looking for new ways in terms of Metal, and this search sometimes can breed some good works, some not so good, some too bad, and some very good. And in the last group we can find OPHEL DUATH, and Italian quartet with some well-known members, and their new album "Hemmed by Light, Shaped by Darkness" is a very good one, in the middle of the invasion of Metal CDs that's happening right now.

The album comes after a hiatus of almost five years between it and "Thought my Dog's Nose", but it's still a strange and good mix of Death Metal, Jazz and some Post Rock influences. But it's not so confuse inside their musical chaos, you'll for sure like it when got used to the band.

The hand that rocks the sound production is the Erik Rutan's hand, the very same one from HATE ETERNAL, with Alan Douches in the mastering process, so you'll all hear a clean sound, distorted when needed, but always with a very good quality, so prepare your ears.

The band's music is complex and charming, with good harsh female voices and great guitar work, having long songs passing the seven minutes, and better ones are "Feathers Under my Skin" (Where Erik Rutan makes the backing vocals), the complex and hypnotic "Tracing the Path of Blood", the sinuous and heavy "Within This Soil" (good guitar work, with Erik making the solo), and the Doom Metal like "Shaped by Darkness".

A good work, and I hope the band won't take too long again to bring us another fine piece like this.