3 out of 5

Label: 54’40 or Fight!

Produced by: Valina?

Gawd I frickin love Valina.  The driving, intense drumming; the seemingly inoffensive vocals that soon sear your heart with their undercover passion; the generally expansive, let-it-ride song length; the raw one-take vibe…

There’s much to frickin love, although some of that admittedly comes with a learning curve.  And Epode offers all of that goodness… Sssome of the time.  Opener ‘Entel Echo’ is all that and more.  Gang vocals, good riffage, deep, running production.  This leaves you out of breath, wanting more, and second track ‘Eriny’ seems to deliver, with the seething lyric “I want to wash my hands in your blood.”  Yeah man.  Unfortunately, at less than two minutes, the song doesn’t seem like your usual 5+ min Valina approach; the band also seems baffled by this, since it sounds like they just quit the song at that mark.

The suddenness is not the best lead-in to ‘unplugged’ Valina – acoustics, no drums, strings – on 81 Men Without Memories.  The song is actually very Valina lyrically and, in pieces, structurally, but once you’ve found your peace with it, it hits a sequence of stops and restarts that, to my ears, only disrupt the flow.

We’re back to sweet, pummeling goodness on Escort of Soda, matching the openwr’s intensity with an extra dose of looseness, the drums and bass and guitar just slightly off in a pleasingly raw way.  Closer The Epilogue is all strings, cinematic and strong.  As a capper to a full album, this would’ve been great.  Ending this up and down EP this way adds to the unevenness, unfortunately.

Valina is still awesome, no need to worry.  And I’d even say the tracks that work on here are totally worth it.  The full package just maybe isn’t their best representation.