Rating: 6.0

Country: Romania

Genre: Drone Doom

Record Label: Self Released

Release Date: 2008

Track list:
1. Ephemeron 1
2. Ephemeron 2
3. Ephemeron 3
4. Ephemeron 4
5. Ephemeron 5
6. Ephemeron 6
7. Ephemeron 7
8. Ephemeron 8

Total playing time: 55mins

Band Website: Exhalus

Exhalus - Ephemera

Unlike many metal fans that were introduced to drone via Earth and Sunn, I discovered it through ambient and electronic artists like Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, and Stars of the Lid. When I bought my first “drone doom” album, Sunn's 00Void in 2000, I was stunningly disappointed with its heavy-handed simplicity; sure I understood it as a celebration of the riff qua riff, but I missed the subtle nuances I had had found in other non-metallized drone. In the years since then, while I haven't come to love 00Void, my appreciation for the specific sub-genre of drone doom has increased immensely, both from exposure to other bands and from a change in expectations. I no longer expect drone doom to punish the way other metal does or to evoke bouts of headbanging and fist pumping. Those changed expectations allow me to enjoy Exhalus' Ephemera for the long, slow-motion haunted house ride that it is.

What Ephemera isn't, is traditional doom or really even traditional metal. While many of the tracks, helpfully titled “Ephemera 1-8”, are guitar based, the guitars seem to have little in common with standard metal riffing. Power chords are present, of course, but they aren't used to give these songs anything resembling thrust or attack; they are the pained breaths of a dying man trying to stretch his last moments into an eternity. Percussion, when it's used, is likewise different than most metal drumming. “Ephemera 4” has ambient drumming almost entirely devoid of traditional rhythm, a tribal non-jam underlying the sustained guitar tones; “Ephemera 5” has more ambient drumming, but instead of a naturalistic pounding, it's a rhythm-less playing that seems to exist separate from what the guitars and bass are playing; it's an interesting effect, similar to what Varg Vikernes used to do so well in Burzum, but with a drone slant. Only “Ephemera 8” has drumming that locks in step with the guitars and pushes the music forward, creating a cacophonous symphony of Corrupted- or Boris-like heft. The bass playing too seems more atmospheric than anything, a subsonic rumbling sea that provides the currents on which the guitars drift; again this creates an interesting sound and it's difficult to tell much of the time which instrument is actually leading the songs.  These are not metal songs in the sense that they are not driven by either rhythm or melody; if you can accept that, you can enjoy this.

Of one thing I am certain: without Sunn, there is no Exhalus and no Ephemera. Because while it might not be overtly metallic like later Sunn albums, its aesthetic foundation is the same and the stylistic similarities are clearly present, so much that I can imagine during some songs, “Ephemera 2 & 6” for instance, that I am listening to Sunn (sans cult figure guest vocalist, of course). This isn't a bad comparison, but I've never been the biggest Sunn fan (in what might be viewed by some doom fans as mild heresy, I've always found Sunn extraordinarily boring, almost mind-numbingly so). Where Exhalus succeeds where so many other drone doom bands have failed is by shortening the songs into manageable lengths, rarely more than six or seven minutes. As shorter pieces, drone like this fares better by ending before its' welcomed is overstayed; Exhalus is the dinner guest that leaves after the Port is served, Sunn is the dinner guest that sleeps overnight on the couch.

Exhalus haven't rewritten the drone doom songbook, but their contribution is worth hearing for most genre fans. Ephemera sustains a tense, creepy atmosphere as well as most of its contemporaries and provides enough compositional variety to keep it interesting. As with most bands in this style, if you don't like or cannot tolerate drone, you should probably avoid this; because while it might merit the label “drone doom,” it's far more drone than doom.

June 24, 2009