- Jun 26, 2003
- 376
- 2
- 18
ESOTERIC - EPISTEMOLOGICAL DESPONDENCY
Aesthetic Death, 1994
This album is dangerous. I don't know if more description is necessary or even possible. Since this is supposed to be a review, I will try. If a genre must be given this is doom metal, but the merits of classifying this band along with others are tentative at best. These drawn out compositions of droning guitar ambience, brooding, minimalist drums, haunting lead lines and desperate, growled vocals are a documentation of true inner despair. The resulting style is simply the form it had to take. This music is often labelled pretentious or elitist but, paradoxically, the themes confronted here are actually quite exoteric with only the depth and form befitting the band's monicker. How to understand?
Ever felt pessimistic, fatalistic or depressed? Sure you have. Even if it was just a fleeting shadow in the noonday sun. Maybe, like a certain heroine, you shuddered and quickly tip-toed away. We all have such moments. Moments when you realise your dreams are shattered; you are ugly amongst beautiful; awkward amongst socialites and serious amongst inane. A moment of alienation to the method and means of a modern society. A moment when social constructs seem illusory and in epiphany you realise the insane truth of reason: that objectively, madness is a more valid choice. Or as Esoteric would say, a moment of darkness; of total epistemological despondency.
Imagine this moment expanded to a worldview.
Perhaps now we're beginning to approach the mindset of these musicians. It's a world where the summers suddenly seem a little more precious, the space next to you on the bed a little more cavernous and all the plastic laughter a little more disingenuous. Do you dare to stop and think?
Esoteric did and in presenting the un-anaesthetised reality of such, express a vision of the darkness that continually threatens to overwhelm each of us. More honest than the vapid 'feel good' music and television so popular in our society, which of course work from a similar premise (albeit with polarised aims), this record is a shattering of taboo. Although seemingly depressive, the music of Esoteric is actually vivacious in affirming the validity of such dark feelings through art. Rather than be cowed into seeing inner pain as indulgent - you are having a good time really, afterall people are starving in Africa -, this is a passionate celebration of depression; despairing and wrathful. A burning hatred tempers the melancholy, summed up in the telling: 'They caused me sorrow, but the pain will be returned,' from 'Eradication (Of Thorns)' and the caustic lyrics of the death metal sounding 'Baresark.' It is this hatred which gives Esoteric their strength.
Stylistically, these droning riffs hang in the air, always promising a point of resolution only to continue tantalisingly on into the ether, like a metaphor for the misery of an introspective mind. Analysis is pain. Pain is what drives these tracks. It's quite astute stuff. Structure - or lack of - is what takes precedent here. Each disc is comprised of two long, sprawling, doomy epics punctuated by a shorter movement by way of interval. If the former are the depression, the latter are the hate, tending to be faster and more aggressive. As Greg Chandler spits, 'Fuck your morals I have my own, To decide what is best for me, You know nothing of my psychology, only of fantasy and love of order in your tidy, empty lives.' Existentialism, Satanism, call if what you will; Esoteric burn with a scathing flame.
Criticism? Upon first listen the aesthetic seemed a little forced. As if, like so many bands in this style, ideology preceded quality. Perhaps it was simply a shock to be confronted by the intensity of its expression in this music. Across the course of the two discs I remember being slowly won over and by the time the almost Romantic chords to the introduction of the titanic 'Awaiting My Death' serenely floated by, I was convinced I had heard a masterpiece. I grow more so with every listen. This power is both the album's genius and also its danger.
This music is in many ways an embodiment of what it means to live ostracised in Western society in the twenty-first century and even on a broader level when one realises that such ostracism perhaps results from a willingness to openly contemplate the innate fear of the human condition - 'I await my death with both relief and fear'. Maybe the only solution, so to speak, is some kind of heroism. Not the kind you see Russell Crowe perform on cinema screens, or the kind written about in ancient epics, but the simple heroism each of us display in overcoming the circumstances of day to day life.
Perhaps, in expressing both the worst pain and greatest happiness through music, the spectrum of the human condition can be understood aesthetically, and in such conquered and celebrated. Perhaps this is already hopelessly pretentious. How you conquer this album on an individual level I cannot say. Some will ignore it as an indulgence of self pity; some will forever be haunted by its message. Regardless, lyrically, conceptually and at the level of simple execution Esoteric are the most integral band in Metal music and prove that much like love, depression is a very powerful thing.
Aesthetic Death, 1994
This album is dangerous. I don't know if more description is necessary or even possible. Since this is supposed to be a review, I will try. If a genre must be given this is doom metal, but the merits of classifying this band along with others are tentative at best. These drawn out compositions of droning guitar ambience, brooding, minimalist drums, haunting lead lines and desperate, growled vocals are a documentation of true inner despair. The resulting style is simply the form it had to take. This music is often labelled pretentious or elitist but, paradoxically, the themes confronted here are actually quite exoteric with only the depth and form befitting the band's monicker. How to understand?
Ever felt pessimistic, fatalistic or depressed? Sure you have. Even if it was just a fleeting shadow in the noonday sun. Maybe, like a certain heroine, you shuddered and quickly tip-toed away. We all have such moments. Moments when you realise your dreams are shattered; you are ugly amongst beautiful; awkward amongst socialites and serious amongst inane. A moment of alienation to the method and means of a modern society. A moment when social constructs seem illusory and in epiphany you realise the insane truth of reason: that objectively, madness is a more valid choice. Or as Esoteric would say, a moment of darkness; of total epistemological despondency.
Imagine this moment expanded to a worldview.
Perhaps now we're beginning to approach the mindset of these musicians. It's a world where the summers suddenly seem a little more precious, the space next to you on the bed a little more cavernous and all the plastic laughter a little more disingenuous. Do you dare to stop and think?
Esoteric did and in presenting the un-anaesthetised reality of such, express a vision of the darkness that continually threatens to overwhelm each of us. More honest than the vapid 'feel good' music and television so popular in our society, which of course work from a similar premise (albeit with polarised aims), this record is a shattering of taboo. Although seemingly depressive, the music of Esoteric is actually vivacious in affirming the validity of such dark feelings through art. Rather than be cowed into seeing inner pain as indulgent - you are having a good time really, afterall people are starving in Africa -, this is a passionate celebration of depression; despairing and wrathful. A burning hatred tempers the melancholy, summed up in the telling: 'They caused me sorrow, but the pain will be returned,' from 'Eradication (Of Thorns)' and the caustic lyrics of the death metal sounding 'Baresark.' It is this hatred which gives Esoteric their strength.
Stylistically, these droning riffs hang in the air, always promising a point of resolution only to continue tantalisingly on into the ether, like a metaphor for the misery of an introspective mind. Analysis is pain. Pain is what drives these tracks. It's quite astute stuff. Structure - or lack of - is what takes precedent here. Each disc is comprised of two long, sprawling, doomy epics punctuated by a shorter movement by way of interval. If the former are the depression, the latter are the hate, tending to be faster and more aggressive. As Greg Chandler spits, 'Fuck your morals I have my own, To decide what is best for me, You know nothing of my psychology, only of fantasy and love of order in your tidy, empty lives.' Existentialism, Satanism, call if what you will; Esoteric burn with a scathing flame.
Criticism? Upon first listen the aesthetic seemed a little forced. As if, like so many bands in this style, ideology preceded quality. Perhaps it was simply a shock to be confronted by the intensity of its expression in this music. Across the course of the two discs I remember being slowly won over and by the time the almost Romantic chords to the introduction of the titanic 'Awaiting My Death' serenely floated by, I was convinced I had heard a masterpiece. I grow more so with every listen. This power is both the album's genius and also its danger.
This music is in many ways an embodiment of what it means to live ostracised in Western society in the twenty-first century and even on a broader level when one realises that such ostracism perhaps results from a willingness to openly contemplate the innate fear of the human condition - 'I await my death with both relief and fear'. Maybe the only solution, so to speak, is some kind of heroism. Not the kind you see Russell Crowe perform on cinema screens, or the kind written about in ancient epics, but the simple heroism each of us display in overcoming the circumstances of day to day life.
Perhaps, in expressing both the worst pain and greatest happiness through music, the spectrum of the human condition can be understood aesthetically, and in such conquered and celebrated. Perhaps this is already hopelessly pretentious. How you conquer this album on an individual level I cannot say. Some will ignore it as an indulgence of self pity; some will forever be haunted by its message. Regardless, lyrically, conceptually and at the level of simple execution Esoteric are the most integral band in Metal music and prove that much like love, depression is a very powerful thing.
