Epicurean’s début album A Consequence Of Design was originally recorded back in 2005, but has been remastered, remixed and updated with extra tracks for its release on Metal Blade Records. To listen to its progressive metal structures and melodic edge, you’d probably peg them as a Euro-metal outfit.
You would be completely incorrect to do so, however; Epicurean hail from Minneapolis in the US, and it’s plain to hear why they would have stood out from their contemporaries – A Consequence Of Design is the stylistic opposite the tough-guy attitude of American metal.
That’s not to say A Consequence Of Design is an easy listening record, though. Its songs are briskly paced without being frantic, with fierce muted guitar chugging and flattened riffs balanced against synths and pianos. Epicurean extend this musical yin-yang into the vocal performances, where throaty (but surprisingly clear) shouting gives way to melodic passages and choruses that sound like they’ve been ripped from the rotten corpse of the eighties.
Epicurean’s music is defined by the continual flowing movement from melody to brutality and back again, the intricate song structures providing fertile ground for plenty of thematic exploration. A Consequence Of Design is poised, well written and well executed, but also more than a smidgen cheesy in places.
It’s like gothic metal with all the silliness about vampires and pentagrams surgically removed; A Consequence Of Design is unashamedly epic and bombastic, and still has a quota of gothy spookiness, but Epicurean also bring some genuine beefiness to the proceedings, filling out the sound into something much less foppish and anaemic.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t; there’s an optimum pivot point between the two styles that Epicurean don’t always achieve. When they hit the balance, the blend of velocity and epic architecture on A Consequence Of Design is really captivating. “Lithograph” has a genuine sinister weight; likewise the sprawling “Anathema: The Gatekeeper” conjures a sense of creeping malice that opens into one of the most soaring and uplifting guitar solos I’ve heard in ages. But “Mourning Shadow” just sounds forced by comparison, its galloping rhythms tight but somehow inappropriate, like watching a knight ride to battle on a donkey.
Overall, however, A Consequence Of Design hits more often than it misses, and even the lesser tunes are still enjoyable listening – even if you might not want to be caught in the act. Epicurean deserve applause for breaking the mould for US metal, and will definitely become an act to watch closely if they break the European market.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: A Consequence Of Design, Epicurean, metal, prog, symphonic
