Esoteric - Epistemological Despondency (1994)^{Release ID: 1869}

A daunting and at times harrowing experience, but a mind-blowing trip worth taking.

Esoteric’s massive demo tape, with the just as colossal title of Esoteric Emotions – The Death of Ignorance, was both impressive and ground-breaking. I’m sure that whoever heard it at the newly formed Aesthetic Death label had to scrape themselves off the floor and get straight on the phone with the hope of getting these guys signed up immediately. With a label and distribution sorted, the same line-up that performed on the demo re-entered Rich Bitch Studios in Birmingham to record their debut album Epistemological Despondency. How on earth these Brits put together another ninety minutes of material in such a short space of time is beyond me, but they also managed to improve on the unsettling yet transfixing death doom metal sound that they’d displayed on the demo so imposingly during the same period. The new material more comfortably sits within the funeral doom genre for the simple reason that Esoteric spend more time cranking out stupendously slow, devastating riffs than on the demo which regularly upped the velocity. They still vary the speed on Epistemological Despondency, but it’s used as an effect rather than part of the standard blueprint, with the majority subjecting the listener to a trance-inducing, effects-riddled abyss of doomy goodness.

Containing only six tracks yet released as a double CD with the running time of ninety minutes, you might think Epistemological Despondency would be a very tough album to get through in one sitting. Yet that’s really the only way to experience it properly, and something I’ve happily done many times already. It's the type of album you really need to listen to through headphones, preferably lying in the dark, and just let it wash over you with exquisite, crushing despondency. It's surprising how much variety there actually is among these hypnotic tracks with numerous sections in each track that I look forward to immensely. Just as on the demo, Esoteric somehow negate the boredom effect by adding intriguing and at times awe-inspiring effects and adventurous musicianship at just the right times to give fifteen to twenty-minute tracks constant evolution and significance. From a production point of view, the sound shows a small amount of improvement since Esoteric Emotions, but it’s still lacking the clarity and power of their later works. Still, I can’t say it takes away from the experience at all and the band still manage to include all sorts of tricks and effects, mostly in the vocal department, that give the album an otherworldly aura. Greg’s vocals are totally brutal, but the masses of reverb and drain-spinning effects they utilise on them make them downright scary at times!

While it's apparent I love this album to pieces, I can't deny that Esoteric were still finding their feet at this stage. As with the demo, there are some rather unconvincing and inappropriate death metal sections that pop up randomly, shattering the atmosphere that the band worked so hard to put in place. As much as these psychedelic Brits claim to not give a shit about what anyone else wants to hear (as can be read in the rather abusive sleeve notes of the album entitled Fuck Off and Die), I think the band probably lacked the confidence to release a solely funeral doom album that stretched over two discs without breaking things up with aggressive instrument smashing on the odd occasion. Epistemological Despondency is close to a five-star album for me, and I think it could have been if it were a one disc album without the inclusion of Only Hate and Eradification. Bereft, The Noise of Depression, Lamented Despondency and Awaiting My Death are all mind-blowing though and I can't recommend this album enough to those out there that like this style of music. It took me a long time to delve into the extreme depths of funeral doom metal and I spent many years resting on the border with death doom metal bands such as My Dying Bride and Saturnus. I have Shape of Despair to thank for finally pushing me into the abyss, but I think Esoteric are my true reward for taking the plunge.

Esoteric as a word is defined as being 'intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with specialised knowledge or interest' which is absolutely applicable to this monstrosity of a record.  I do not think that I am an expert in funeral doom by any stretch of the imagination but the content I found on the six tracks present on this debut release is anything but confined to just one sub-genre of music.  There is no doubt (even without reading the liner notes that Ben refers to in his review) that this was a record for an exclusive club and that you would not necessarily know whether you were in that club or not until you started listening to the record.

I like my music as extreme as the next cave-dwelling Metal Academy scribe but there are moments on Epistemological Despondency were even I begin to struggle.  It may be the less than successful deployment of the death metal elements or the horrific noise intrusions and oddly muffled (maybe too down tuned) instruments - or in fact all of the above - but something is definitely off for me here.  There are not a lot of moving parts I sense, yet they some how bash into one another far too much like an extra-large dodgem set up at a fair with only 6 cars on it.  Logically they have a bigger area to move around in yet somehow they still continue to bump into one another.

It could be that I have come to this record too late and that the boundaries of acceptable extremity in my music have been stretched enough already at my age for me to be able to judge this record appropriately without the context of what it was trying to do in 1994.  Whether I am 18 or 47 though I do not think that Epistemological Despondency is for me.  There is too much to get through, being delivered by sparse component parts for me to want to get behind the cluttered arrangements and oppressive presentation to be bothered to understand what it actually wants to say about justified belief or opinion (if we take the album title by its intended definition of course).