Esoteric United Kingdom

"You know, if there is one metal genre where the Brits have always been in front, it must be doom metal. In the likes of Black Sabbath, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Cathedral, Warning, and Esoteric, Great Britain have delivered some of the most groundbreaking and artistically amazing doom metal band of all time.

Esoteric have been around for a long time, haunting the world with their slow and depressive atmospheric funeral death-doom, and in "Paragon of Dissonance", they have committed another piece of doom metal brilliancy.

True to their genre, Esoteric make use of incredibly slow paces, many of the tunes have incredibly heavy and droning sections, while other sections display a heaviness more typical of more traditional doom metal. These doom-ladden sections are juxtaposed with more post-rock like melancholic sections, some of which are on the verge of being soundscapes, and this approach works brilliantly in generating a lot of atmosphere - dark and oppressive atmosphere, the way it should be in doom metal.

Like fellow funeral doomsters Esoteric are strangely melodic, and like Mournful Congregation, Esoteric make brilliant use of growled vocals that become one with the music and end up actually contributing to the atmospheric feel (and normally I do not like growls in doom metal, but here it works).

Any fan of slow, depressive and atmospheric music should definitely check out this slab of funeral doom metal.

(review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)"