By: Liz Levine
Rating: 7/11

Eyal Maoz, the main force behind Edom, takes some serious guitar skills and applies them to various dabblings in the musics of decades past on their second release, Hope and Destruction. Comprised of Maoz on guitar, Brian Marsella on keyboards, Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz on bass, and Yuval Lion on drums, the group delivers unhinged 70’s jamming over jogging 80’s pacing. The song structures and hooks reveal a firm nod to pop, while Maoz’s soloing makes up the bulk of the band’s actual sound, a wailing, exploring thing that admits a clear appreciation for jazz. Thinking nothing of conventional structure, the tracks feature background, load-bearing drums and bass while the guitar and keys skip along on their mystical journeys; indeed, the tone of the latter two instruments is proggy and suggestive of another land.

Opener “Somewhere” is an appropriate introduction with its part ominous, part playful feel that sounds a bit like Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” with hints of metal and freak-folk tease. The album is all about the jamming, and Maoz does so with single-note picking that can be crisp and round, fuzzy and dense, or screeching like a siren. What really makes his playing interesting is that whatever sounds are being emitted feel strongly singular, like no one has made the guitar expel such a noise before. Meanwhile, Marsella’s “Hammond B3 organ and extreme synthesizers” dance along with the strings, sometimes in unison and sometimes on their own, but always taking a prominent role in the song. Judgment Day organ rattles finger-pointingly on tracks like “Eagle,” whereas “Rock” flirts with Pied Piper, Renaissance merriment verging on the cheesy. Hope and Destruction is dirty and full of sound experiments in a way that’s not at all grating, but rewarding for what it proves the instruments on display can do.