Esoterica – Aseity (2013)

Featuring members and ex-members of outfits like Krieg, Vital Remains, Chaos Moon, and countless other bands, today we have Esoterica and their monumental release “Aseity”. Featuring a thick and devastating atmospheric component, this Ambient/Black Metal release will enshroud your sonic landscape with crushing riffs, demoralizing vocals, and very thick layers sound aural dissonance.

Wasting no time, Esorterica blows things wide open with a pummeling onslaught on the opening track “Lessons in Forbidden Alchemy”. The band’s three members deliver one hell of a powerful sound with a merciless guitar distortion and perfectly crafted drums complementing the harsh vocals. This punishing musical approach nicely continues on tracks like “A Slave’s Ablution” and “Fever”, both of which never let go of the listener’s throat with their crushing atmospheric elements.

Nicely for us that like variety, the tempo changes into a slow and painful one in “Lethe”. The band nicely changes things up to keep going with their demoralizing approach, but with a different and more hypnotic tempo to please even the most demanding USBM fans. We particularly love how this track develops its melodic riffing over the course of 11 minutes of musical magic.

After the high-octane “Womb” we have “AEther Communion”, a song that has a certain ‘old’ Alcest vibe to it. Closing with this very mellow (yet pummeling) song, the release nicely comes full circle and showcases the band’s strengths in crafting unique melancholic pieces that are still raw and punishing. Having a monolithic wall of sound in each of their tracks, Esoterica creates a very dense listening experience in this release. Clocking in at 44 minutes, this is one hell of a debut release that no fan of USBM should miss.

Label: Forever Plagued Records

Release: September 28th, 2013

Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

Country: USA