Style: Symphonic Black Metal, Experimental Black Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Trhä, Xasthur
Country: France
Release date: 9 October 2026

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Quality versus quantity: an age-old debate. My artist of the decade—I can declare the position fully locked up even with three full years remaining—is Caio Lemos of Kaatayra, Bríi, etc. I’ve reviewed him eight times for the blog,¹ and he has featured on my top 10 list every year I’ve written here (spoiler alert: he will again this year). The consistent quality of Lemos’s art is all the more incredible considering the prodigious quantity at which he releases music. There are few other artists out there releasing even the quantity of music Lemos does, let alone with quality even half as high. We all know King Gizzard suck, pissing out releases as they please as a marketing gimmick. 

If you’ve heard of Esoctrilihum, the one thing you undoubtedly know about the solo project of French madman Asthâghul is that it’s prolific. Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur is the twelfth Esoctrilihum release of the 2020s. If you haven’t kept up with the project, I’ll declare myself qualified to loop you in, seeing as I’ve heard ten of the twelve records, including this one. I can tell you that Asthâghul is an immensely talented multi-instrumentalist and composer who effortlessly glides between esoteric styles of black, death, and doom metal. He’s also wildly inconsistent and desperately needs an editor—the albums aren’t only frequent but also very very long. I imagine every other review of an Esoctrilihum record for the past five years has mentioned he should take a deep breath and spend more than a handful of months on a single record to craft a masterpiece, rather than diluting his great ideas by spreading them across several bloated records. Unsurprisingly, Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur doesn’t break this trend.

Unfortunately, Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur faces several issues, the most major of which is that it’s nearly unlistenable: the production is that horrible, albeit inconsistently so. Take “Hèzykhäwl, Dravil Harpzghül Ab Castox Ularüs,” for example: The track starts with a dramatic melodic riff interspersed by towering synths and female vocalizations—a promising start by any metric. But two minutes in, Esoctrilihum shifts to a much more drum-forward percussion that has a bad brutal-death-metal snare drowning out the violent, noisy, and sloppy guitar playing. Thankfully, the track regains its ground by the end once it introduces the harp. Unrelatedly, I desperately want more extreme metal with harp in the future—please use that instead of sax. So, while the album occasionally sounds fine, many sections are mangled by unlistenable segments that are fully an artistic choice. The production overwhelms itself.

Also ambitious, Esoctrilihum presents a wide variety of vocals on Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur from Asthâghul’s normal gnashing harsh vocals, both high and low to fit his black/death metal hybrid aesthetic, to the aforementioned female vocalizations. But the sticking point is his operatic clean vocals, where he himself tries to imitate a female soprano: He lacks the skill to pull the style off. It is absurd and hilarious—fitting for the fever dream-ish album this is—but it also sucks, and taken along with the production and general bloat, they destroy the record’s enjoyability. 

Essentially, Asthâghul is evil Caio Lemos. He is talented with a knack for toying around with genuinely interesting ideas—his greatest evolution is the harp on Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur. But he spews out records without regard for their overall quality, and many of the experiments fall flat on their faces. At the end of the day, Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur is just another Esoctrilihum record. See you next year.

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Recommended tracks: Ysiellys, Mystixaar Quyen Ox Flamyr Daemon; Ulhies Vaay Xar, Nuctis Xhoral Sorthïlazur
You may also like: Veilburner, Tchornobog, Hasard, Wreche, SkyThala, Maerund, Maladie
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: I, Voidhanger Records

Esoctrilihum is:
– Asthâgul: Guitar, Bass, Drums, Synth, Harp, Organ, Orchestration, Vocals

1. This is certainly not all of his releases in the timeframe, either. ↩︎