Review Summary: The Telluric Ashes of mighty long album names… and one of the year’s better extreme metal offerings.
The world of extreme metal has certainly become nuanced, jaded and confrontational in these last few years. Expectations are different, standards are higher and the bands that made head-way before are somehow still checking all the right boxes. Still, that hasn’t dissuaded purists in dismissing new trends and newcomers from dismissing the “if it works, don't fuc
k it up” approach. It’s left many a band looking for a comfy middle ground to rest their laurels, hang their hats and call it a year. None of this applies to the claustrophobic and sweltering
The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods (from here shortened to “
The Telluric Ashes…” with no disrespect) to whom Esoctrilihum place every ounce of the vehemence found within their career into a relentlessly exhausting display of seventy five minutes.
While I’m actually unsure whether Esoctrilihum’s 2019 piece is deathly blackened or blackened death (to which in all things considered. is quite an achievement itself)
The Telluric Ashes… is a challenging, yet completely rewarding listen for those who relate to the dense paroxysm that bleeds dissonant infernal writes of monolithic proportions. Needless to say, at seventy five minutes,
The Telluric Ashes… takes some time to reveal its intricacies, even if the journey speaks to the most harrowing of mindsets that ill-defines an easy listen. Opener “Kahlbas Mha (Ode To The Muhorn Pain)” sets an immediately intrinsic tone of Asthâghul’s death growl over a foundation of
swarth-ly riffs and sweltering atmospherics that reaffirm that Esoctrilihum’s 2019 effort isn’t here to prove anything more than what this particular project has offered on its last three full-lengths, instead the continuation of sound showcases slow and steady growth, with a hefty run-time to match. At times,
The Telluric Ashes… feels very much the same, offering up similar variations of immense blackened death metal. The atmosphere found throughout the album’s length does much of the heavy lifting to which all instrumental facets find sure footing. Even the album’s initial single presents a semi-thrash soundscape to which “Kros Ö Vrth” shifts into a cacophony of melting blast beats and underlying guitar shrills, there’s no shortage of underlying riffs or vehement tremolo as Asthâghul goes about making more noxious moods. Faint tempo and timing changes add to the calamity, constantly shifting the expectation of sound, and subtle and occasionally unnoticed swings tilt the listener deeper into
The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods’s sonic, yet calculated rage.
There are many highlights to be found within
The Telluric Ashes…, or rather, there are very few moments that would be considered low-points of Esoctrilihum’s newest album. Sure, it’s a dense listen filled to the brim without room for rest or reprieve. Yes, the length may find itself unimpeachable for some listeners, but it’s a journey made deliberately to be abrasive, living in the realms of dissonance and inaccessibility and certainly not a thing made for the gentle at heart. That aside,
The Telluric Ashes… is a pleasure (as far as high quality music is concerned) that delivers in tracks like “Invisible Manifestation of Delirium God” and the back to back “Black Hole Entrance” and “Black Hole Exit” which manifest human screaming onto an unearthly plane of musical existence. These tracks are pensive, as if each track is simply waiting on the other and the mood again shifts to abhorrent melancholy. There’s a journey here, it’s just hidden in a few weaving layers of murky compositions.
Considering the fact that the Esoctrilihum moniker has released four albums between 2017 and 2019 (two of which in the same year) there is a question whether Asthâghul is actively trying to bludgeon his listeners to death with his music.
The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods has a brutal edge to it, but it’s not so unfamiliar when compared to the Deathspell Omega and Portal’s latest slabs. That’s not to undersell it, Esoctrilihum is completely its own entity, warped into its own mystical understanding and spewed onto a landscape of sound for all to hear. As much as a cop-out is to say that
The Telluric Ashes… isn’t for everyone, it’s simply true that people won’t “get” why this album is so long, why it needs to swirl and shift or why there is no sense of rest and respite. Be that as it may, Esoctrilihum continue to add a consistent highlight into the realms of modern day extreme metal and thus far continues displaying Asthâghul’s impressive ability to craft mood from all manners of extremism.
