| Reviews for Ea's Ea Taesse |
| And then there was Ea. - 95% |
| Written by Nehushtan on March 24th, 2009 |
| Out from the dark unknown comes Ea, a band that is mysterious in both their identity and location. Being a new outfit, that I know of, the level of production and talent here is what you would expect from only the best efforts of a seasoned funeral act. Or perhaps they are veterans, creating Ea as a side project. Brand new or not, Ea no doubt shines forth an epic album full of atmosphere and mysteries. The songs are a haunting kaleidoscope of dark ambiance, despair and beauty. Ea’s shadowy creation is like a lost, mournful ghost, forever wandering though the land of shadows and moonlight. There is an ample supply of hopelessness and doom, but there is also an ancient beauty that resonates throughout this majestic construct. Ea Taesse could be considered one long song that clocks in a little over 50 minutes. But Ea splits Ea Taesse into three different parts, Laeleia, Mea Ta Souluola, and Ea Taesse. But in my opinion, I think this album was meant to be listened to as a whole. Just turn off the lights, kick up and let the journey begin. No instrument here overpowers any other. They all form a perfect balance of orchestrated darkness. The guitars and bass work are low-tuned and hypnotic, creating an empty and eerie feel. They also strike up melodic leads from time to time, along with a handful of occasional acoustic passages. The drumming is quite talented also, never too repetitive and always doing something different. The main vocals, whatever strange language they are speaking in, are an extreme low growling whisper. There are also female vocals that haunt the background here and there as well. Vocals are not plentiful here though; probably a good 95% of Ea Taesse is totally instrumental. The strings, drums and vocals all create a dark ocean of sorrow and mystery that rise and fall in great tides. But if these instruments are the vast dark waters of Ea, then the keyboard is the moon that creates the tides. The keys are a gravitational pull of dark energy that constantly tug and twist at Ea Taesse, creating horror and sorrow, bleakness and beauty. You will hear melodic passages of church stile organs, ethereal swirls of majestic atmospheres, church bells, angelic choirs, piano passages, and xylophone stile clinks that reminds me of something out of Nightmare on Elm Street. Hopefully this is just the beginning for Ea, so many funeral doom bands come and go. They create something that is completely epic and original here. This is a must-have for any funeral fan that does not already own Ea Taesse. Fans of Monolithe, Comotose Vigil, Skepticism, even older Draconian will be stunned by the brilliance and vastness of Ea’s Ea Taesse. |
| Predictable, but in a pretty good way. - 80% |
| Written by caspian on August 23rd, 2008 |
| Those who've stopped by Ea's page on the way too this review will probably notice that Ea sing in a "dead, but archaeogically reconstructured language" or something along this lines. So perhaps it's not terribly surprising that this is easily the most predictable, cliched funeral doom album ever, as these sort of gimmick bands (*coughNILE) rarely have anything more then a very thin shell of originality. If someone asked me 'what does funeral doom sound like?' then I'd go straight to this album. There's a few different styles of funeral doom out there- the torture doom variant, the Thergothon variant, and the bombastic, grandiose style that seems to be pretty popular these days. This album is firmly in the latter category- big drum sound, plenty of guitar leads and pianos playing some very uncomplicated lines, huge choir synths that are a major fixture in every song. It's a fairly pretty, unthreatening sort of Funeral doom that surely can't be terribly popular with the more dedicated fans- I imagine a more dedicated funeral doom dislikes this the way BM fans look down on stuff like Dimmu Borgir and PM fans with stuff like Sonata Arctica- but I don't find it terribly offensive. It's sugar coated but pretty damn entertaining. I guess the reason why I like this as much as I do is that while it is cliched, it's cliched in all the right ways. Just as it's hard to fault a Slayer/Darkthrone/Motorhead clone if they get the cloning right, it's hard to hate this band. The riffs are pretty simple, but still do the job. The guitar leads are slow and mournful- always supporting the song and never offending you. The synths and keys are omnipresent but again, they're never bad- they fill in the sound nicely and often give things a ridiculously overblown (Summoning would be proud!) and bombastic sound. Ea certainly aren't the most subtle band in the world- but seeing as small, delicate touches are lost on me anyway then that's OK with me. Yeah, this is a pretty enjoyable record. Ea throw originality out the window and concentrate on making the most pure funeral doom record ever, and for the most part they succeed. It's not perfect- the last movement in particular is a bit too long- but for the most part this is solid and extremely well executed; there's not really anything about this record that I could say is bad. Worth getting, and probably a good introduction to the world of funeral doom. |
| Ebb And Flow - 79% |
| Written by oldfart37 on June 2nd, 2008 |
| It’s funeral doom. It’s the melodic, orchestral kind of funeral doom, with the choral vocals and gigantic synth backing, the kind that I tend to like rather than the guttural ambient noise driven funeral doom. The big question is, does anything make it different from the rest? Well, Ea’s gimmick is that they claim to have written about ancient cultures in their ancient, dead languages. Hard to tell of course as the vocals inevitably have a fairly small part to play in the overall picture of these three tracks and become part of the general orchestral feel. As a gimmick it’s kinda weak, but fortunately for Ea they have the goods to back it up. There is a clear slowbuild structure to the three songs, not as pronounced and obvious as say Monolithe, but still quite neatly worked. The rogue element here is the drumming – its big and occasionally booming, and the person on the skins frequently lets loose a much more random style and provides an excellent counterpoint to the much more restrained and structured areas of the songwriting. There are so many extra bits of instrumentation floating in and out of the mix that its hard to identify them, and in the absence of any concrete information its also therefore hard to tell if those extra instruments are analogue or digitally created. On the title track in particular they work well to enhance the general ebb and flow of the song, however in some ways it has to be said that perhaps the truism of ‘less is more’ might apply here – think of the amazing beauty of the classical passages entwined in the music of Shape of Despair for example. Simple, elegant, classy – Ea don’t quite pull it off in the same effortless way but they make a damn good stab at it nonetheless. It’s not really a drone as much as a tide – rolling in, rolling out, the only thing missing being the actual sand and surf which would after all clog up the CD player. So instead, sit back and let the water soothe you, opening an eye occasionally when a particularly good drum roll or instrumental noise catches your attention – don’t try to follow it all too closely, just enjoy the sensation that Ea brings you. |
| EA - Ea taesse - 85% |
| Written by Phuling on April 19th, 2008 |
| One 55 minute long song divided into three parts, by a band with origins and members unknown (although I’ve read they’re American, but I can’t be 100% sure), that is said to utilize dead languages of ancient civilizations. That sounds mysterious enough to be intriguing, but unfortunately no information’s provided as to what civilizations nor languages are supposedly used. So it doesn’t deliver on the high expectations born by this utilization. Music wise it does however definitely deliver the goods. A sort of drone-like funeral doom metal, reminding me quite a lot of Shape of Despair, but with a much higher drone aspect, and also with moments of ambience. These songs (and I say songs, not song) seems to be built around a repetitive notion, where elements are constantly added until it reaches a sort of crescendo, which slowly fades out into the next track. ‘Cause there is no real crescendo, just built up atmosphere that seems to wanna explode, but instead does the opposite and is inhaled again. The elements that are added can be anything from piano and keyboard to some form of tinkling that I can’t identify, but that gets me thinking of 80ies slasher and horror flicks. The riffing is slow and heavy, letting the drumwork take its full effect, where the deep growls are only sparsely used. It results in a quite bombastic album, that I have problems to resist. But as a listener you can’t be afraid of drone-like repetition, as you’ll probably just get bored instead. Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net |
| Marathon endurance drone trundle - 60% |
| Written by NausikaDalazBlindaz on May 9th, 2007 |
| The inspiration behind this album was intriguing enough: funereal doom metal based on the sacred texts of ancient civilisations with the lyrics all in the dead cultures' languages as reconstructed by archaeological / linguistic research. Unfortunately the CD sleeve gives no information as to the language/s Ea use on the CD and which texts plus we don't have an English language translation of the lyrics so listeners get absolutely no idea what Ea are singing about and what message the ancients might have for us. It's necessary for us to rely completely on the music for some idea of what this message might be. For me anyway, it's hard not to think that Ea might be stringing us along the way their fellow Americans Velvet Cacoon did a year or so ago with their dieselharp guitar, the Earth Liberation Front front and the faked early recordings. Well, to the music ... the three tracks are long and they're similar enough that they are like movements in a very long drone doom metal opus. Opening track "Laeleia" sets the tone for the album with very slow and sombre doom metal featuring drawn-out droning guitar riffs of sandpaper quality but not especially deep. The bass guitar follows the rhythm guitar closely so the drummer is left to improvise on his tom-toms as he likes, which is an interesting touch: it adds an element of tribalism or barbarity if you like. There are other instruments too that flesh out "Laeleia": piano in parts, organ, some pure tinkling tones that suggest a celesta (a mini-piano which produces very light sweet tones) and spacey ambient synth notes at the end. And of course there are the lyrics, delivered in a deep rattling death metal vocal with accompaniment from heavenly choral aahh-ing. Track 2, "Mea Ta Souluola" (with apologies to Napero, these track titles look like Finnish to me!) carries on in a similar funeral vein: minimal repetitive guitar drones, choral voices (keyboard-generated, I'd say), droning organ and that drummer banging away on his hard tom-toms. It all sounds very grand and bombastic and the music is constantly building up and up and up with all that repetition and the addition of more effects like orchestral brass instruments effects. But it's hard to feel any kind of emotional connection (even a negative emotional connection) and I can easily imagine some listeners who are not used to this kind of drone doom metal might feel they're being trundled over by juggernaut teams of slaves and oxen carting heavy stones over to the next pyramid construction site. On we go: the title track continues on in a deterministic, almost triumphal way. Super-deep guttural vocals arise as if from a murky black tar-pit and are hard to make out; there are airy female vocals as well in the background. High-pitched melodic lead guitar leads the way for much of this track. Towards the end, some unexpected quiet passages introduce a sorrowful ambience which carries right to the very end. My impression of "Ea Tasse" is that though the musicians are very good at what they do, they don't seem to have thought right through this concept and what they could do with it, and so the music is narrowly focussed on the grandiose, bombastic angle with maybe a hidden lesson if any on how even the greatest and richest civilisation eventually passes into dust as any student of ancient history should know. The whole recording comes across as a marathon endurance drone trundle which is very remote in feeling and any human aspect is completely overwhelmed by the musical padding that builds up. The structure of the music depends on repetition so all this build-up keeps on going and seems to pass straight from one track into the next with no clear climax or release of tension that would differentiate the individual tracks. And come to think of it, the concept behind "Ea Tasse" isn't that original: Sunn0))) had a track on their "White2" album released some years ago on which Attila Csihar was crooning verses selected from an ancient Indian epic The Rig-Veda in the original Sanskrit language. |
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