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Esoteric: The maniacal vale

18/11/10 || The Duff

I honestly had no idea what to expect from something termed funeral doom, but I’d heard great things about this English band’s latest “The Maniacal Vale” and figured I’d take the plunge along with other sub-genre recommendations Ahab – grandiose, ambitious, trawling works that seethe depression, from what I’d been told, quite accurate if you ask me. Esoteric’s music is insanely slow, stupidly downtuned in ways I thought impossible and dark, twisted, foreboding and despairing in an unparalleled sense if you are willing to overlook the somewhat comical nature of the music and allow yourself be submerged in the weighted depths of a fathomless, inescapable deep.

“The Maniacal Vale” is a double-disc affair that sweeps the gamut of emotional range, at first opening with chiming cleans that ring with a deep sense of loss before crashing into an almost uplifting but still quite desperate barrage of guitar distortion, and so the trail spanning one hour forty and change is set – with some highs, but mainly lows, this album has some of the slowest, simplest and heaviest riffs in existence, mixing it with drawn out, disturbing and harrowing cleans all amassing to one swirling atmosphere that takes you on a journey to the heart of madness – some of the walls of sound that crash through to the listener sound like a portrayal of dementia itself.

Three things aid in the delivery of the album’s setting; the thickly layered production, Greg Chandler’s deep, resonant vocals that sound like a lethargic Mikael Åkerfeldt and the lyrics. The first of these is a very professionally wrought affair, the music I would assume closer to Ahab’s “The Divinity of Oceans” than to “The Call of the Wretched Sea” (the latter I consider quite sparse as it never exceeds four-piece quality) if GD reviews are anything to go by; a more atmospheric style of funeral doom means you need richness, and the band has worked on this album’s sound so as to maximize the madness and weighted claustrophobia.

The vocals you should know exactly what to expect if you are followers of the sub-genre, but Greg Chandler is still expressing some versatility in his performance considering his role is solely to work the slowest of the slow riffs into an agonizing, despairing ride; the key here is to represent madness, and his bellowous lows and screeching, raspy highs do so in fine form along with the emotional weight carried by the rest of the band. The lyrics work exceptionally well in conveying a message the vocals and music never fail in doing anyhow, and although not at all comprehensible and as such negligible if you simply don’t give a shit, they do complete the package along with the “12 Monkeys”-looking artwork if one were so inclined to read up on them.

A fantastic effort; I’m not nuts about funeral doom, but when sharing a lonesome moment at restless midnights with nothing but my thoughts of where the fuck my life’s gone, this can hit just the right spot. My one complaint, which is very minor, is that the double disc affair seems like one continuous ride with the exception of “Caucus of Mind”, where the band speed up so much I originally mistook it for a doom take on classic Judas Priest – not a sign of it in the booklet, so I’m assuming the band simply wanted to break stride, which is very peculiar. I suppose it works, but I wouldn’t have minded its complete omission. Highly recommended UK band though, on this effort alone, and I eagerly await the follow-up which is due any time soon I hear.

Information
Released: 2008
Label: Season of Mist
Website: Esoteric MySpace
Band
Gordon Bicknell: guitars
Greg Chandler: guitars, vocals
Mark Bodossian: bass
Joe Fletcher: drums
Olivier Goyet: keyboards

Tracklist
Disc 1
01. Circle
02. Beneath this Face
03. Quickening
04. Caucus of Mind
Disc 2
01. Silence
02. The Order of Destiny
03. Ignotum per Ignotius

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