Ebonylake - In Swathes Of Brooding Light (2011) - Schizophrenic symphonies - 80% (17/07/12)

What the hell did I just witness? Ebonylake is an avant-garde gothic metal band from United Kingdom that mixes many styles in their unique music. We can hear bist and pieces of Black Metal, Death Metal, Doom Metal, Progressive Metal and Symphonic Metal that are combined to epic tracks filled with unpredictable changes, distorted emotions and inhuman noises. In comparison to this, bands like Adversus, Akphaezya or UneXpect are joy rides through a colourful wonderland. Ebonylake are definitely hard to digest and it's tough to actually call the uncompromising mixture of ednless disharmonies music. I would only recommend this stuff to fans of truly complex avant-garde stuff and maybe those who adore the Japanese Noise scene. There are only a few calm symphonic moments as in "A Voice In The Piano" and they never last too long. Most of the other songs are just an uneasy ride through the musical gates of hell with very few short breaks.

Let's pick one song to give you a better example of what I actually try to describe. "I Painted The Suicide Of Neptune" is a rather slow and doom orientated track. Disharmonic and depressive guitar chords dominate the track. The drum play has no structure but is very heavy and present. The distorted and almost alien sounding vocals are mixed in the background. You hear melodic vocals, blackened screams and sometimes several voices perform at the same time. It's quite impossible to distinguish any lyrics. The track has several disharmonic and random breaks and the noice factor alwaysl rises like a slow spiral. We actually get some heavier riffs after more than three minutes and some discording piano melodies that create a disturbing and haunting atmosphere. The vocals have stopped and the song slows down before a quite fast and agressive passage with distorted vocals suddenly kicks off again. This passage has a heavily destructive sense before another break sets in and the track goes back to its doom tone with distorted guitars, wild drumming and hypnotizing clean as well as blackened vocals. As you can see, there is a structure in this song and the track always goes back to its basics but you may only recognize this after several tries. This record needs a lot of attention, patience and time and only few people will put all of this in thsi kind of music. Those who will may discover greatness. Anybody else will just ahte this music. What about the end of the song? Oh yes, towards the end, the whole thing gets a little bit faster once again and finishes with some operatic female vocals that appear from out of nowhere. At this point, you've just stopped wondering. You expect the unexpected and you may still be surprised again.

Almost all songs are similar to this one I just described. They contain abrupt as well as multiple instrumental changes, agressive passages as well as more doom orientated moments and clean female and male vocals as well as blackened male vocals. This record is pure schizophrenic chaos. This album is destructive and extremely uneasy to listen to. This release takes absolutely no prisoners and the opening song "And From The Seas The Sickening Thing" is even one of the worst to make this clear from the beginning on. The band puts more changes into a four minute long introduction than other bands put in their entire discography.

Its quite hard to evaluate this kind of music. It's definitely artistic and unique. It's a disturbing but fascinating experience. One can only listen to this from time to time and most people will abandon after the first track and never touch this kind of weird stuff again. It's easy to understand why. From a personal point of view, this kind of music is just inhuman but from an objective point of view, it's definitely more avant-garde than anything I have ever heard before. That's why I give a rather ordinary rating. My personal appreciation lies around sixty percent after several tries but it might still grow. First, I have to get rid of all those headaches. But musically, there is a solid structure behind all this brutal chaos, a elaborated concept beneath all this endless madness, a honest passion throughout all the massive destruction. Some people will refuse to recognize this but attentioned listeners will discover this fact very soon. The band put a lot of time to create these ten tracks and every band member is actually quite skilled. That's why this record would be worth an almost perfect score from an artistic point of view.

My final rating lies between these two reasonings. You should be warned and try this out at your own risk. Give it a shot if you feel free for truly headbreaking stuff and witness all this insanity in ten mostly overlong song structures and over on hour of schizophrenic symphonies. It's definitely worth to just get yourself an idea of something you have probably never heard and will never ever hear again of in your life.