EPHEL DUATH LIVE A DOG’S LIFE WITH THROUGH MY DOG’S EYES
Italian avant garde Metal act Ephel Duath have been releasing impossibly complex music for about a decade now and each release is more intricate than the last. Imagine If Mike Patton fell asleep and began dreaming about John Zorn painting a portrait of Dillinger Escape Plan playing a Black Metal set. Yeah. Well, never mind all that for a moment because it happened to occur before the heavy drugs set in, apparently. The past, as they say, is prologue. On January 26th, 2009 the band will release their fifth album, Through My Dog’s Eyes, on Earache Records. This collection of songs, as the title suggests, is written entirely from the perspective of a dog.
To be a Metal fan you have to be able to accept that you can’t take the music too seriously. Metal is like a circus. It’s fun in a mock-frightening way with plenty of pathetic, drunken clowns. And Metal labels tend to give “artists” carte blanche when it comes to their work. You’ll never hear a rep from Earache say, “Ummm…yeeeaaah, we’re just not hearing a solid single in any of these songs.” Ain’t gonna happen. Metal acts are given enough artistic freedom with which to hang their selves. It’s like a parent saying, “Oh, Timmy will be fine playing in the street unsupervised as long as he’s wearing his helmet.”
Through A Dog’s Eyes will feature guest appearances by Marco Minnemann of Necrophagist and Ben Weinman of Dillinger Escape Plan. So I guess I’m going to reserve judgment. It’s not as if this is a band where the lyrical content figures prominently. For their follow up release they should consider working with the parrot from Hatebeak and the cow from Bovinus on a musical interpretation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Perhaps even Budgie and Basil from Caninus would be interested in making a cameo.
Only in the world of Metal.
