Esoteric - Paragon Of Dissonance

 

Artist: Esoteric
Album: Paragon Of Dissonance

Label: Season Of Mist
Year 2011

Esoteric are not an easy band to get into. Their music is extremely oppressive doom metal that is disgustingly heavy, at times gorgeously cinematic, and always epic in scope. Every three or four years they release another colossal hour and a half long album with like 7 songs on it that proceed to suffocate the life force of the listener in their own cranky and miserable way. Led by guitarist/vocalist Greg Chandler and multi-instrumentalist Gordon Bicknell, they hail from the lung-blackening air of Birmingham, England. They use gigantic, deliberate drums and roaring walls of extremely downtuned and distorted guitar and bass, all topped by tormented vocals wrung through a battery of spacey effects. At times they’ve incorporated psychedelic interludes, progressive ambition, ambient drift, extensive use of keys and raw noise much like their American peers Neurosis. But while those guys started out playing hardcore punk and imbue their compositions with an elemental ferocity which is only made possible by an agile rhythm section ramping up the tempos, Esoteric never seem to rise beyond a crawl. Every moment, every bar of their music is massive, deliberate, and inexorable.

Paragon of Dissonance (fantastic title, by the way) was my first real experience with the band. I’ve been peripherally aware of them and what they were about for years, but didn’t get around to giving them a proper listen until a friend started talking them up to me a few months ago. When listening to a new album by a band that has long since-secured its legacy, one will often find themselves comparing it to previous triumphs. The question then becomes, “Does it measure up?” But when I’m new to a band, I like knowing what they’re up to now. And I can say this… Paragon of Dissonance is a fine introduction to a band whose every move is planet-sized. It’s a double album, like most of their records, and incorporates all the sounds and scope that fans of the band have come to expect. The tracks are long, with many twisting, suite-like arrangements that morph and transform and crush with relentless purpose. The intensity of the band is thrilling, and their ability to fold different layers and textures into the immense towers of sludge and overdriven fuzz that make up most of their sound means their records can sustain interest. What’s more, their patience allows them room for them to explore and try different ideas. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes you can find yourself getting numbed by the immensity of it all. But when given a close, active listen all of these tracks have incredible power as well as fascinating stylistic detours.

The album opens with the jagged, staggering riffs of “Abandonment” as spirals of feedback peel off and pounding double bass rolls devastate the landscape. Tortured, throaty vocals erupt bile and hatred over the proceedings. It’s all harshness, abrasive noise, impossible sonic decimation and hopelessness. But Esoteric can be tuneful too. Soon the song drops into a grandly epic doom trudge that recalls Paradise Lost, or Candlemass with Mike Williams from Eyehategod fronting the band. At 13 minutes it makes for an intimidating order, but if you take a gander at the run times for these songs, it’s pretty much par for the course; 5 of the 7 tracks top 10 minutes. Sometimes it seems as though the band is simply marching into infinity, though when the payoffs emerge, they’re generally pretty astonishing. As the band builds to a mighty finale, the toms are hammered relentlessly before the drummer launches into another grinding double bass assault and a triumphant figure emerges from the tangled morass of guitars and noise.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that Esoteric are not a band who plays slow and heavy because that’s all they can handle. These guys can really play. Many of these tracks have complicated polyrhythms, and tempos shift on a dime. It’s tight, complex, and adventurous music. Although they are used sparingly, the guitar solos here are very accomplished, showing a musical, neo-classical sensibility. Esoteric are a masterfully controlled group who are not afraid to grind an idea into dust. Such an approach for skilled players takes tremendous patience and discipline.

The album’s centerpiece is the 15 minute behemoth “Disconsolate” which encompasses everything Esoteric do well. The track opens with glacial synths that sketch ghostly figures across the night sky. Phashed guitars begin to mesh with the echoing synth waves. The affect is akin to seeing one’s breath on a winter’s day. The band members enter one at a time at a measured pace. A few minutes in, a lovely piano-led space interlude floats by, before it is swallowed by the monolithic riffage that one would expect. They begin building to the main theme of the song, cruising on a Neurosis-style cosmic doom passage that while not exactly uplifiting, is also not depressive. Somewhere along the way though, the bottom drops out, and suddenly we’re being suffocated in misery. This switch up is accomplished with masterful feel for timing and impressive subtlety. It’s surprising, and it’s powerful. About halfway through, it lurches into a blackened, thrashy kind of gallop, before settling back into a spacy, ambient drift. It’s a feint though. A few moments later, a million of the heaviest guitars in the universe flatten the listener with galaxy-crushing force. You might see the switch-up coming a mile away, but it’s thrilling nonetheless. And that’s what makes Esoteric great – the ability to recombine familiar ingredients in ways that still have the power to excite. A doom riff soon oozes out of the mire, as the drums begin their relentless march, and despondent, torturous vocals wallow in the quagmire of distortion. When the whole thing collapses into a wandering, searching psychedelic bridge, it’s only a breather, albeit one that finds time to show off some gorgeous lead tones. Soon the band ramps up the tempo, pummeling with grinding double bass rolls and slabs of thick, brutal guitars and heavily swollen bass. Ultimately, the track climaxes with a fleet-fingered classic metal tapestry worthy of Iron Maiden, topped by a thrilling, heroic guitar solo.

This thing tops out at an hour and thirty-four minutes, and it’s not exactly something you can listen to on your way to work. There is nothing particularly pleasant or hummable about these songs. Every song sounds like the end of the world, with the band summoning all of their skill to evoke utter annihilation. It’s a daunting listen, and one than can be outright exhausting at times. But there is a place for music like this, even if it ‘aint houseparties. Paragon of Dissonance evokes certain moods of despair and hatred that we feel in our everyday lives.  Because sometimes, life is just a terrible disappointment, and you wish everyone who was on your case was just fucking dead.

Rundown

The initial life cycle of metal and rock from genesis to the distillation of their various subgenres was more or less complete by the mid '90s. With high tech recording techniques, fully developed distribution systems, worldwide fan bases and codified musical parameters, extreme metal had smashed barriers and exceeded expectations, but now the music risked obsolescence. Nothing could sensibly be more brutal or heavy than the metallic extremities reached in the wake of modern black, death, and doom metal. By the time death machines like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse had become semi-popular bands on major labels and the media circus surrounding the teen terrorists in Emperor and Mayhem subsided, things were as fast and technical and brutal and evil as metal could possibly be. Meanwhile the worlds of sludgy doom and metal-inflected hardcore were looking beyond mere velocity (or lack of it) as a barometer for their artistry. The world of heavy music began to see these disparate strains  re-connect with the lineage of Sabbath (with an assist from the glut of decidedly non-metal grunge and heavy alternative bands now saturating the modern rock scene) and even start to incorporate industrial, psychedelic, drone, space, classical, garage rock, experimental, electronic, post rock and noise elements into the music.

The new frontier became making songs interesting and listenable and musical while still retaining the core of malevolent otherworldliness and primal aggression and power that made this stuff so darned cool in the first place. Also, the void that had existed for hard rock in the 1980s was now being filled by grunge and stoner rock bands that absorbed punk and psychedelic traditions and married them to metal musicianship. Combine this with the mainstream media virtually ignoring real metal altogether from about 1992 to 2004 (Pantera notwithstanding) and what you have is the makings of a complete organic regeneration of the heavy music underground. Young bands wanting to make a lot of noise suddenly had much wider palette to work with.

By the time I was old enough to know, the story for heavy metal was over. Iron Maiden and Metallica and blah blah blah. Modern rock meant Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. I loved those bands, but it was a thing of the past. It wasn't the shit that was going down now. Nu metal was the stuff I had access too, that and the lingering remnants of the alternative explosion a decade previously. The new hip rock coming out of the underground was in the rave-up style of the White Stripes. I liked that stuff, but I also played bass. I needed the heaviness that garage rock didn't bring, and I quickly grew disenchanted with the overly slick and calculated "Fuck you!" and hip hop posturing of the likes of Limp Bizkit that was on TV. This is the environment that I came to heavy music in as a teenager in the early '00s. I had no older siblings and few friends who were in to music the way I was, so I figured most of this stuff out on my own.  I listened to our local radio stations and learned some there, but most of my education came from books, and eventually, the internet.

Only once I could download music was I really able to grasp on to the fact that there were awesome bands making music right now. And I had access to them. Sure, some of the knowledge was second hand, but just knowing that these bands were going concerns was enough to make me feel like I was for once part of the zeitgeist, not wishing I was in Seattle in 1992 or San Francisco in 1985, or Detroit in 1968. So here is a list of some of my favorite records during the time I was learning about just what kind of music I liked. Sure, in some cases I didn't find out about these records until years after they were released. But they hadn't been canonized. No one was telling me they were classics. I just decided for myself.

Neurosis - Through Silver In Blood (1996)
Neurosis were pretty entrenched as icons of the metal underground went by the time I got into them. I did try a few times to get into them, but it didn't quite click. Still, I didn't know anybody who actually listened to them, so the first time I heard this on my headphones late at night while walking through a misty moonlit field, the sheer universe-collapsing force of "Purify" was a revelation. I couldn't believe anything could be that heavy. It introduced me to post-metal, in which the elemental force of the riffs could be married to dynamic arrangements and psychedelic layering in a way that still seems fresh to me today. A thousand imitators have come and gone, but no one has done it better than the originators.

Boris - Amplifier Worship (1998)
These guys had to be insane I figured. A crazy Japanese metal band named after a Melvins song who released a new album like every month in a totally different style? Ridiculous. Feedbacker, Floods, Rainbow, Pink, Absolutego, Heavy Rocks, Dronevil and Akuma No Uta all have their charms, but this one has always been my favourite. (And, incidentally, the namesake for this here blog.) Godly heavy walls of guitar, droning palls of feedback and an agile rhythm section that could downshift from meaty thrash to an ocean of fuzz and noise, incomprehensible vocals and titles to die for. ("Vomitself"?) I've worshiped at their altar ever since.

Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (2000)
At first, this band was just a rumor to me. Stories of a bong-blasted trio of basement dwellers in deepest, darkest Dorset singing hymns of burning witches and black masses at midnight captured my imagination. The internet was a different place then, and I had a hard time discerning much about them, other than that these were bad people up to no good. Finally I came across a few of their records. And while my personal favourites are still Supercoven and Come My Fanatics, this is the LP that all others will be measured against. It's not as spacey or as raw, but it's definitely the heaviest thing they ever did. Or anyone else for that matter. To me, they're still the heaviest band in the universe. Dopethrone is an obelisk, a monument, a giant heavy thing. It's irreducible, ireeductable and irreplaceable. Fuck off. The wizard canes harder.

High On Fire - The Art Of Self Defense (2000)
I was already way into Sleep when I heard that Matt Pike had a new band that was more overtly metal influenced. Needless to say it wasn't long before I was in love with this and their second record, Surrounded By Thieves. Behemoths like "Baghdad," "Blood From Zion" and especially "10,000 Years" took the lumbering sludge of Sleep, ramped up the tempo and turned in that band's stoned majesty for sheer bloodlust. George Rice's bass tone on "Fireface" could liquefy solid tissue. While I believe they eventually bettered themselves as a band as Pike's vocals improved and they found their sound by rotating through different bassists and producers, sometimes I still think this is my favorite from them.

Tool - Lateralus (2001)
When Schism hit the airwaves at my local rock station, I didn't know what to think. Who are these guys with their 6 and a half minute songs and weird claymation videos? The singer from A Perfect Circle? I like those guys! And this is his other band? They played a show in Vancouver in about November of 2001, and I toyed with the idea of going to see them. I didn't, but I bought the record about 3 weeks later, and I've regretted missing out ever since. Lateralus is a desert island top 5 record for me. After all these years I can still get lost in it, the hidden meanings and mathematical allusions and coded messages of it continue to fascinate me, while the brooding instrumental attack of the band is still as powerful to me as anything.

Sunn O))) - Flight Of The Behemoth (2002)
I first read about these guys in a magazine which had a picture of them with their hooded robes. I knew they did kind of an update on the first couple Earth records, none of which I knew too well. I didn't know at the time that they were the same guys in Burning Witch, Khanate and Goatsnake, other impossibly heavy bands I was getting into at the time. So I basically bought this on a whim. And it immediately fell flat for me. I dug the heaviness, but it was too monolithic, too boring. And the Merzbow tracks wierded me out. I liked the idea of the band far more than their actual music, and soon filed the disc away to be forgotten about. It wasn't until several years later did I revisit it and finally -got- what this was about. And to be honest, it's not their best album. But the day it finally clicked for me was when I decided to give it another try on maximum volume and realized that the last song is actually a slowed down version of Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and that this is the very essence of pure sound, slowed down, stretched out and distended. It's the moment that huge riff drops, but continued on into infinity. And I still have a hard time with Merzbow's out of tune piano pounding.

Comets On Fire - Blue Cathedral (2004)
This was the first really cool record that I got into without any outside hype at all. I at least knew who most of these bands were before I heard their music. But Comets was a total impulse buy. I read a single review and dropped the cash. And it was like nothing I'd ever heard. They took parts of the Blue Cheer/Hawkwind/Iron Butterfly type acid rock I'd been digging for a long time by then, slathered it in all kinds of noise and feedback, and kicked out the jams in a way that sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard. It was new, and it was some of the most exciting music I'd ever heard. And it was all mine.

Isis - Panopticon (2004)
I listened to a little of Oceanic when it came out, but I didn't love it... I felt like Isis were mostly Neurosis clones, and I wasn't all that interested in them either. It wasn't until I finally did see Tool live with Isis opening that I truly got it. The circling drift of "So Did We" and "Backlit" captivated me while the walls of guitar washed over me. For whatever reason, it was the experience of seeing them onstage that unlocked Isis for me... and suddenly the albums made sense. I can't really explain why, but I do know that I still come back to this record time and time again despite having grown weary of the avalanche of post metal copycats that saturated metal in the late '00s.

Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)
Mastodon were a whole new thing for me. They were a metal band, but they rearranged the pieces of Voivod and Metallica records and brought in all kinds of other influences that completely turned my understanding of music on it's head. Not to mention, I actually read Moby Dick because of this album. And you know what, the beginning and the end are great, but the middle is really just an 1850s whaling manual.

Black Mountain - Black Mountain (2005)
These guys are from Vancouver and are still responsible for some of the best live shows I've ever seen. But we before that, I remember reading an article about them in which they were compared to "glue-sniffing shredders of yesteryear like "Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd." That still seems on the money. I just remember those endless sustained synthesizer washes exploding into a lurching triple time riff march on "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" followed by the kraut-riffing of "Druganaut" blowing my mind. It was like hearing classic rock for the first time.

Dead Meadow - Feathers (2005)
Dead Meadow took shoegaze and stoner rock and spliced them together to create something that to me will always evoke hazy summer afternoons. I was already into stoner rock, but when I heard these guys for the first time, it seemed different. They were ethereal and pretty, but still had heavy riffs and gorgeously fuzzed out wah-guitar leads. When most of the shoegaze type stuff I'd heard seemed overly precious, these guys were heavy. They were rocking out. And it had the transportive, meditative feel I loved about psychedelic music. I love all their records, but this one stands the tallest.