Ephel Duath - "Pain Necessary To Know"

Take the interesting parts of The Dillenger Escape Plan and cross them with the prog ambitions of The Mars Volta, then remove anything compelling or listenable, and you have this album from Ephel Duath. Pain Necessary to Know is a bland attempt at jazz-metal, containing no discernable songs in its thirty-eight minutes, but a grand number of distinct musical sections that are intended as songs, but don't cohere to one another in any discernibly meaningful fashion. Thrashing start/stop rhythms and quiet/loud dynamics characterize every piece, along with generic, indecipherable cookie-monster vocals. The three-part "Vector" (presented out of order) is a succinct example of the problems this record has as a whole. Mildly interesting melodic sections jut heads with dissonant jazz-thrash, sounding almost exactly like an emasculated Mr. Bungle or a toothless and drunk Naked City. Yes, its all intended to be a grand artistic statement, concept album or what have you, but Pain Necessary to Know most assuredly is not necessary in any way, except for perhaps the masochists who enjoyed System of a Down's Hypnotize.