Day: January 27, 2018

If every now and then the re-release of the first recordings of a band can be superfluous, if not even misleading, both because of non-optimal sounds and because not very representative of the musical style developed later, certainly the same can not be said about the re-release in CD format of the first demo of Esoteric, entitled Esoteric Emotions – The Death Of Ignorance. It was a series of favorable coincidences, including the anniversary of the twenty-fifth year of activity of the band and the unity of purpose by Greg Chandler and Stu Gregg (owner of Aesthetic Death), to make available again on the market a work that was now available only in the guise of bootlegs from the poor quality / price ratio, offering it on the contrary in a format cared for from the point of view of graphics and sound. Beyond the goodness of the work, which should be listened to without knowing the subsequent production of one of the monumental groups of doom, so you can appreciate it without suffering a distorted perception of its value, it is important to note the historical importance, since it came out in a period, the beginning of the nineties, in which several bands were beginning to propose that diluted and slowed down form of death metal that would become the funeral. Unlike many other musicians, Greg Chandler does not deny at all what he composed and published at the beginning of his career and, although Esoteric is with time transformed into a band rightly object of worship for its interpretation of the genre that avoids the typical styles, the choice to repropose the demo in a remastered version shows more than many words how he considers that first release an important step, not only from the historical point of view, but also from that of the future development of the sound of his group. On the other hand, Esoteric Emotions – The Death Of Ignorance does not seem so obsolete even today, if you look closely, because it happens not infrequently to listen to works of bands that refer without too many qualms to those sounds, sometimes raw and essential, which contain the prodromes of that funeral doom of which Esoteric, along with Thergothon, Skepticism, Evoken and Mournful Congregation have dictated some of the main guidelines. For those who had any doubts, listening to two magnificent songs like Scarred and Eyes Of Darkness (not surprisingly the two longest and funereal of the work) should dispel any remaining doubts, making the purchase of this fragment of history of extreme metal something more than a simple act due.

1993 – Independent 2017 – Aesthetic Death