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ERDVE “Epigrama”
ERDVE “Epigrama”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Music doesn’t get much bleaker or more hopeless than “Epigrama” from Lithuanian band ERDVE. It’s about as cheerful as your four year old getting a terminal cancer diagnosis. Which is what the band intended, I’m sure. If you can endure this lightless excursion into human pain, you might find this to be a pretty strong album.
This is labelled as an “experimental sludge” album. If your idea of sludge is something ice cold and grey, I guess it qualifies. The primary influence I hear is hardcore. But it’s a hardcore where anger is replaced by a feeling of utter despair. There’s lots of dissonance and at times there’s an almost industrial feel to the choppy staccato beats. There’s no “metal” guitar solos as we understand the term. It’s more like outbreaks of skronky guitar noise. The drumming is absolutely pummeling and the bass is so low tuned you get a rupture just listening to it. Is there any melody? If you stretch the term to the breaking point, you could say there is a certain icy version of it here. But that’s stretching it. As for vocals, those are a monotone bellow all the way through, with no variation.
Is it worth looking into? Well, there are times this is so heavy, it sinks to the planet’s core. If you like the edgier versions of hardcore like CONVERGE, BOTCH and BURNT BY THE SUN, this should work for you. There are even some deathcore breakdowns and gothic touches. I get the impression ERDVE is 100% committed to this and put their all into it. You can tell. But it’s not an easy ride.
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