SUBCONSCIOUS DISSOLUTION into the CONTINUUM

Frightening and insane - 90%

It's no easy effort for me to write a review about this (or any) album by Esoteric for a music site such as Metal Archives, because, the way I feel it, there's so much more to this assault on the senses than merely music. Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum is a pulsating mass of extremity and emotion - TRUE emotion, not just sad melodies and depressed lyrics - and plodding ever onward it humbles, frightens and manipulates the listener with every thunderous beat, every despairing tone, every heart-wrenched syllable. This is the very essence of despair pressed onto a stylishly packaged disc of iridescent plastic. But maybe that's just me being overdramatic with words.

Still the vehicle for this psychomanipulative slab of leaden despair is music, and if you want to be specific this could best be filed under extreme funeral doom. All the necessary ingredients are there: the guttural growls (a style of vocals I've always found more fitting to doom metal than to death metal), the crushing minimalistic drums and subtle, crystalline melodies which are actually quite gorgeous in places woven through the droning downtuned guitars. Where Esoteric differs from most if not all other bands in this genre, is that it has thrice as dense an atmosphere, actually varied song structures, truly tormented melodies and a great sense of build-up (notice, for example, how in the first minute of opening track Morphia almost unnoticeably flows from a relatively tame and melodic intro into utter funereal madness), plus a certain 'something' I can't quite describe. The vocals are in one word monstrous, and consist of the sickest grunts you might ever hear, sometimes with hysteric black metal screeches layered behind them. Especially where these two vocal styles converge it sounds nothing short of diagnosed insanity. The production is quite clear, bass-heavy but without drowning out the fragile melodicism entirely.

Indeed this is a very intense experience. It's very hard to listen to this album entirely, and quite unpleasant depending on the mindset with which you try out this album. I must say I'm not too fond of the more 'chugging' moments without the melodic second guitar parts or keyboards, but in upholding the oppressive, desperate atmosphere of slowly going insane, it does more than its best. More than once I have started to listen to this album in the dark, but every time I had to turn on a light again at some point because I was actually getting scared. No matter if you like it or not, for a band to be able to build such an intensely desperate, psychomanipulative atmosphere deserves nothing but praise. Not for the feint-hearted.

Written by Rabbi_On_Acid on November 10th, 2007 (Metal Archives)