Erdve has made a name for themselves over the past decade by offering some of the bleakest hardcore and metal around, blending elements of sludge, hardcore, and black metal together in ways that were atmospheric and chaotic in equal capacity. At times their first two albums felt like they captured a similar tone as Celeste, but they incorporated a different set of influences that gave off a feeling of its own. For their third full length Epigrama the group has taken their balance of dense, heavy, and atmospheric elements and refined them into a more controlled yet just as potent variant. With songs that move between brute force and more introspective and tense atmosphere, it’s an effective evolution of Erdve’s sound that leaves an impact.
The title track comes through your speakers like a bulldozer, offering sludgy, hardcore grooves and abrasive guitar leads that feel like they’re trying to hammer you to pieces. It’s noticeably dense, and some of the lowest tuned and heaviest riffing the band has offered to date, coming through like a more hardcore leaning take on Meshuggah at certain points. But it wouldn’t be an Erdve album without some atmospheric breaks, and “Epigrama” does give you some breathing room with some tenser melodies at key points. The first half spends much of its run offering these shifts between weightier grooves, sheer destruction, and bursts of darker melodies that blur the lines between hardcore, sludge, post metal, and some black metal. But once the album’s second half begins, this is where it feels like Erdve really pushes outwards and tries some genuinely different things. “Trukmė” lets an ominous melody hang over the recording while the grooves expand underneath it, but just as the atmosphere reaches an almost suffocating level the band lets off the gas and transitions to a rhythm that has more of a hip-hop and industrial pulse. “Svertas” shifts back towards the heavier end, reaching an almost Primitive Man level of bleakness and weight, while “Raukšlės” has a post metal meets black metal cadence that allows its layers to ebb and flow in ways that offer plenty of raw emotion. To me it felt like the album really hit the stride during the second half, as this is where the atmosphere reached its peak and some more experimentation emerged, though there is something to be said for some of the brute force the first half has to offer.
While the rest of the band may blur the lines between the metal and hardcore ends of the spectrum, vocalist Vaidotas Darulis has a rawer scream that feels more rooted in the hardcore side of things. It’s an effective approach, as the rawness of the emotion really comes through each verse and Erdve tends to space them out so that the intensity never wavers. Songs like “Ydos” also have a rhythmic approach to the screams/yells that remind me more of classic 80s hardcore rather than some of the more modern metallic hardcore, and this gives the group a sound that’s a bit more unique compared to the others out there. Admittedly the pitch and cadence doesn’t change that much from song to song, and I’d be curious if there’s room for the band to shake things up just a little more.
With their third album, Erdve has reigned in some of the chaotic elements of their earlier works in favor of a more measured and deliberate approach. The chaos comes through as a bit more controlled, with the grooves and dense riffing feeling more calculated in their destruction, and the pacing has been adjusted so the atmosphere can reach even bleaker and haunting peaks. For me, the second half is where this album truly hit some mesmerizing peaks and started to differentiate itself, but it’s still consistent as a whole and showcases how far the group has come. Epigrama is available from Season of Mist.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
