An Esoteric album is something always partly looked forward to and also anticipated with a feeling of expectant dread. Although I am aware that I am really going to want to hear it, I am also all too aware that it is likely to have the power to send me over the edge. The group originated in Birmingham in 1992 and have now with this released six full length albums. The latest, like those before it, can be looked upon as an ‘event’ rather than a mere release. The band may not be the most prolific but when you hear them you will understand why. ‘Paragon Of Dissonance’ is an album that is split in two and has seven monstrous songs weighing in at just over the 90 minute running time. Promo for this arrived a good month ago and I am still trying to get my head round it. Indeed I am still trying to get my head round debut album ‘Epistemological Despondency,’ so that’s no surprise. I also had the chance to catch a couple of the new songs live the other day too and guess that has helped the gravity sink in a bit but still I am only just grasping the madness behind this utterly unique music.
It’s not an easy job describing the group’s music to someone who has never heard them, difficult even for someone who has. ‘Extreme doom’ is the tag that has been garnered upon Esoteric and it is also highly epic with songs averaging the 15 minute mark. There are aspects that are in common with the funeral doom bands and also a death laden attack that rears up and bites, especially due to vocalist Greg Chandler’s feral rasps, gruff intonations and demonic gabbling. It would be crazy to look at this new album on a track by track basis but as I play ‘Abandonment’ track one the song has a real feeling of down tinged maudlin despair coursing through its melody. Guitar lines spiral through as though there is a vacuum and they are forging their way out of it with some feel of hope amidst an otherwise feeling of bereft despair. It’s certainly not happy stuff in the slightest.
There has been a fair few members come and go through the years, the only real constant Greg Chandler himself. This release sees the departure of long time guitarist Gordon Bicknell and if I were to be honest and did not occasionally have contact with some of the past band members I could easily imagine them having gone mad and being locked up in straightjacket comfort of some bedlam never to be let back out into society. One thing is for sure this is not an album for the casual listener and it could well destroy those that are not well versed in listening to extreme music and those perhaps who linger on the precipice of madness themselves.
As I carry on writing, still on the first track, it has risen to a crescendo of demonic beastliness. The weeping guitar line cuts out and we are dropped into squalling feedback which is pretty much the modus operandi for each of these labyrinthine tracks, the main difference between them being different sonic textures and melodies, all rife with abandonment and hopelessness. As the heart-wrenching haunting piano tones of ‘Loss Of Will’ sigh in I am going to sign off. Outside the weather is grim and people hurry about their business in a futile fashion, this is the soundtrack to their despair and a statement that there is nothing left but a huge void and a pit of despair for all of humanity to be sucked into forevermore.
http://www.myspace.com/esotericuk
Pete Woods
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