(written by Islander)
The French progressive death metal band Epitaphe have chosen simple Roman numerals as the sole titles for their albums, an interesting choice because their music is far from simple. One of our writers summed up their debut I as “an eclectic, avant-garde combination of quite intellectual death metal with doom-death shades”, and we wrote that in an immense song from their second album II “their richly layered maneuvers are intricate and crafted with care, but all contribute to an overarching impact, guiding the listener with a sure hand through changing moods of fear and despair, longing and grief, turbulence and collapse, and ultimately ushering us into a haunting dream”.
And now Epitaphe are returning with their third album, III, which will be released on September 11th by Aesthetic Death and Gurgling Gore and which we’re premiering in full today. The labels’ press materials preview it in these words:
The album pushes the band’s death metal foundation to new extremes, embracing an even harsher, darker and more unforgiving sound without sacrificing the sophistication that has become synonymous with EPITAPHE. Counterbalancing its crushing weight are exquisitely crafted acoustic passages and richly atmospheric interludes that paint vivid sonic landscapes. Once again, at times the distinctive voice of the saxophone plays a central role, adding remarkable depth, warmth and color while further reinforcing the band’s unmistakable musical identity.
And we want to share these comments from Epitaphe themselves:
This new album is the natural evolution of our sound, expanding upon the foundations of our previous records. It takes the intricacy of our death metal roots even further, while making our inclination towards acoustic guitars & atmospheric sections more prominent.
With a stronger presence of “non-metal” elements, such as saxophone, clean vocals & synthesizers, it also draws from the experimental & ambient nature of our side project, Eventide (Waterline, released in 2024).
To our ears, III is our most personal & accomplished work to date. We hope you’ll like it!
It’s possible to sink deeply into each of the album’s four main songs individually, and we wouldn’t try to dissuade anyone from doing that, but the sum of this long album is greater than its parts. Setting aside nearly an hour to make the full trip non-stop is the best way to appreciate Epitaphe’s new achievement.
Four main songs, yes, but we don’t mean to imply that the relatively brief instrumental opener “Half-Light” should be disregarded, because it creates a beautiful spell. The dance of its bright, glimmering notes is indeed entrancing, although the melody increasingly hints at moods of melancholy — and the sudden swell of thunderous tumult near the end hints at other, even darker, things to come.
The first full song (and the album’s longest one), “Windswept“, seems to carry forward the melody of “Half-Light” but in much more devastatingly destructive fashion. It introduces listeners to a storm of riotously battering percussion, immensely heavy low frequencies, and predominantly tremolo’d riffing that writhes, roils, and feverishly stutters, as well as gargantuan gutturals of cavernous depth.
The momentum is frantic and ferocious, but Epitaphe insinuate steadier beats and lace the onslaught with guitar-leads that slowly whine and moan. They also create less stormy moments in which slowly humming bass-lines undergird moodily picked guitars, musing saxophone melodies, and further evidence that Epitaphe are very good at weaving dreamlike musical spells. And they complement this song’s most spellbinding phase, which might remind you of strains of jazz from a distant past, with soulful singing.
They also transition from those minutes of seductiveness into a phase of greater turmoil in a way that proves how carefully they plotted the course of these songs, preserving melodies but altering them and tracing them in different tones, including a much more piercing saxophone performance. It’s a seamless transition, and a stirring one, and on the other side of it the music viciously surges with a driving pulse (though the sax remains a striking presence, and the sultry singing resumes as well).
The song’s unfolding eventually leads the music into darker and more dismal domains, in which the sax cries out in stricken tones and the collage of other instruments (and the vocals) sound similarly stricken. That shattering final phase is accented by eye-popping drumwork, but it’s still a grievous experience.
It’s no wonder that Epitaphe revealed “Windswept” as the album’s first single, despite the fact that it’s more than 16 minutes long, because it’s such a remarkable demonstration of the band’s wide-ranging performance skills and attention to detail, and of how organically they flow their music between periods of contrasting intensity and stylistic diversity.
Their choice of a second single also made sense. Having introduced the new album with its longest song, they followed it with a much shorter one (relatively speaking), the nearly-seven-minute “Transient“.
Like “Windswept“, it opens with a beautiful and engrossing acoustic-guitar instrumental, eventually joined by clean-sung vocals, subtle but superbly crafted bass-lines, and head-moving beats. But unlike “Windswept“, “Transient” never crosses over into heavier death-metal territory. It still displays Epitaphe’s meticulous attention to detail and their talent for creating layered textures and musical evolutions, which in this case includes brilliantly shining synths, but it’s a much more dreamlike experience.
On the album, “Spring Frost” comes in between the two singles, and “Liminal” brings the record to a close. Each of those surmounts the 14-minute mark, and probably needless to say at this point, each of them traverses broad musical territories. They are connected in melody, mood, instrumental textures, and stylistic diversity to the other tracks, and these continuing connections are a key reason why listening to the album straight through is the best way to experience it. They are also individually just as thoroughly engrossing as “Windswept“.
Of those two, “Spring Frost” eventually includes the album’s most dissonant, discordant, frenzied, and fraught passages (a dramatic but still seamless change from the song’s “Transient“-like beginning), and “Liminal” includes both the album’s most alien and haunting opening and its most desolate and doom-drenched moods — though it will also knock you back on your heels when it transforms into an experience of violent derangement that rivals the most unnerving phases of “Spring Frost“, augmented by truly harrowing vocal monstrosity and shattered singing.
Yet with “Liminal” Epitaphe don’t forsake their gentle spells or their non-metal interests — you’ll have one more demonstration of that in the song’s final minutes.
So, to bring this wordy review to a close: III is an exceptional album, an exceptional study in change and coherence, a long but steadfastly immersive work that’s sophisticated but also viscerally powerful, and one that incorporates in seamless fashion a broad array of musical interests and mood-changing experiences. It will richly repay the time it asks of you.
EPITAPHE is:
PB: Vocals, Saxophone
AG: Drums, Percussion
LB: Acoustic & Electric Guitars, Fretless Bass, Keyboards & Effects
III was recorded by James Leonard at Mémoire Mécanique Studio and Pentachrome Wave Studio, before being mixed by James Leonard and mastered by Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studios.
The album artwork features “Spring Frost”, a striking painting by Finnish artist Petri Ala-Maunus, whose remarkable creations have also adorned Epitaphe’s two preceding albums.
Aesthetic Death will release the album on CD and vinyl LP, while Gurgling Gore will release it on cassette tape.
PRE-ORDER:
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/album/iii
https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php
https://epitaphe-gurglinggore.bandcamp.com/album/iii
https://www.gurglinggore.com
https://epitaphe.bandcamp.com/album/iii
EPITAPHE:
https://epitaphe.bandcamp.com/
https://instagram.com/epitaphedeathmetal
https://www.facebook.com/epitaphemetal/