Review Summary: Once there was a heavy band. They were so heavy that everyone died. The end.
I'm an idiot. Sitting in my room at one in the morning, eating a bowl of cocoa puffs, trying to write a review, my very first no less, on Esoteric's
The Pernicious Enigma.
A Worthless Dream drones as I decide to take a look around to rest my eyes from the glare of the screen, when something catches my eye. After a small start I am relieved to realize it was just the ominous shadow of my giant freak head cast over the eastern wall of my second-story bedroom, reaching all the way to the corner where my small drumkit groans under the gentle weight of several months' worth of dust. The relief is brief, however, as reality sets in: It's night and I'm all alone with nothing but The Pernicious Enigma to keep me company. Indeed, I am an idiot.
To take my mind off of this unfortunate fact I turn back to the screen. I should probably explain why I keep calling myself an idiot. Becoming an idiot is what happens when you begin doing anything of note, anything at all, in the dark while listening to Esoteric. Nothing slices through self esteem quite like the disapproving growl of Greg Chandler, perched forbiddingly on a swell of crushing despair brought by his band of brooding, satanic hatemongers, including guitarists Simon Phillips, Gordon Bicknell, and Steve Peters. Only three, you ask? Three guitars on top of Bryan Beck's synth and bass? And this mysterious, probably equally-as-unsavory character known simply as "Anthony", keeping these leviathan songs in time by hitting a drum every once in a while? Three? Well, shut up about three; that's how things were done back in 1997. Listening to these impossible dirges would suggest rows and rows of guitars and basses, an unholy choir conducted by Stan himself (or Satan; I can never remember) atop his unholy, idling motorcycle while his local unholy waste management company makes its rounds with its large, grumbling, unholy trucks in the background. There really is no end to this cacophony; none that you care about anyway. But where did all this come from? Where did it begin?
The first notes you hear are an ethereal twang of a single guitar, echoing in what already seems to be some unfathomable, Lovecraftian void, the first notes of the aptly-named
Creation Through Destruction which also happens to be one of Esoteric's better songs overall. This admittedly thin rug of sanity is tugged lightly by a couple of other effects before being wholly snatched from under you as the rest of the band swoops in seemingly all at once, but you don't fall. Falling would be far too pleasant a fate! You're doomed to be pushed and pulled around the noise at will for the next two hours or so, with no sense of time or shape. Everywhere is space, every beep and blip, every thunderous strike of a combined twenty-two strings (do the math) is calculated to disorient you. Occasionally a movie sample will appear, but don't get too comfortable at the sound of some intelligible English, it will just echo and fade away into the blackness. All the while your guide, the aforementioned Mr. Chandler, is growling into a pillow, adding a dissonant sense of suffocation that seems impossible in the infinity around you. And then the clean leads of
Passing Through Matter gradually become discernible to lead you out and back, free to either continue on with whatever suddenly insignificant-seeming task you were previously busy with or...well, perhaps listen to Esoteric's
The Pernicious Enigma again? As for me, I'd stick with the latter, time permitting.
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