Review: Esox – Watery Grave

Style: Atmospheric black metal, dark folk (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Agalloch, Pantopticon, Ulver
Country: Italy
Release date: 9 May 2025

While admittedly I am a sucker for head-spinning technicality played with surgical precision, there is a nagging sense of exclusivity to the elite performances of tech death and progressive metal. To play pieces by artists like Archspire or Animals as Leaders requires a level of dedication to solely performance, meaning that expression of ideas in this space is relegated to those with perfect timing or those who obsess over recording details. Many folk-adjacent genres, on the other hand, often revel in a lack of technicality or absolute precision in favor of a more ‘organic’ sound, choosing to instead focus on the intent of the music and let the rhythms breathe more naturally. Heavily inspired by Agalloch, a landmark band in this more folky style of metal, Italian artist Esox aims to tap into this sensibility through the murky and predatory depths of lakes and wetlands. Does the one-man project’s debut release, Watery Grave, engender these primal sentiments, or does it go off the deep end in the name of a chthonic atmosphere?

At the heart of Esox’s sound is the namesake pike, a menacing freshwater predator with ultra-sensitive attunement to the movements of water and a penchant for lying in wait for its next victim among aquatic plants. Melancholia seeps into every moment of Watery Grave, depicting the final thoughts of a man who attempts to end his life by drowning. Tracks are often introduced with plaintive acoustic guitars and soundscaping, whether it be rain beating on a lake or the sound of creaking wood. From its waterlogged base emerges black metal intensity, replete with atmospheric tremolos and blast beats in free-flowing compositions that often culminate in a melodic solo. Pensive folk instrumentation sweeps in to gently carry tracks downstream after an intense prey chase; truthfully, Watery Grave is as much dark folk as it is black metal.

Watery Grave’s most ascendant moments happen when the folk instrumentation is given space to shine. The blast beats in opener “As I Descend Above the Water” are cleverly springboarded into by acoustic guitars and the sounds of rain, and the extended ambient section afterwards is euphorically woeful. Esox effectively captures an aquatic sensibility in the instrumental effects, as if the chords being played are a rippling disturbance on a placid lake. My favorite moment of Watery Grave is the intro to “Livyatan melvillei”¹, which sits in suspicious stillness as an ominous whale call is juxtaposed against the sound of creaking; one can’t shake the thought that something massive is waiting underneath the surface for a moment of inattention or vulnerability to strike. The metal sections, in comparison, range from enjoyable to frustrating. The opener’s black metal aggression works great as a piece of the greater whole, adding a sense of aggression to the placid seascapes and building to a melodic solo in its climax. However, the climactic solos across the black metal sections run into an unignorable problem: they’re just not played in time. The arpeggios on “Esox Lucius” and “As I Descend Below the Water” are in a fearsome rhythmic altercation with the drums as the guitars can simply never agree to the established beat, as if they were recorded completely separately with no checking to see if they work together.

Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely adore Esox’s aqueous sensibilities, and I think that in many instances Watery Grave does a great job of encompassing the listener in murky aquatic atmospheres through ineffably organic performances and unsettling soundscaping. But despite all the record has going for it, the prevalent off-time playing is just too much, almost to the point of being able to predict when it will happen next. My attention during Watery Grave should be directed to the lurking menace camouflaged by underwater flora. Instead, I end up focusing on whether an upcoming guitar arpeggio is going to line up with the drums, trying to make sense of the arrhythmic harsh vocal cadence, or guessing how long it will take the left and right acoustic guitars to sync again. No matter how powerful your atmosphere is, too much rawness and imperfection in the performance is going to create an unintended dissonance that actively fights against the underlying aesthetics. Of course, I don’t want Watery Grave to be an ultra-polished product with metronomic precision, but I at least want to feel some level of rhythmic cohesion in the instrumentation, and these slip-ups happen just often enough that it seriously detracts from my enjoyment.

Attention to detail is brought to many facets of Watery Grave, from compositional prudence to striking underwater ambience, and I wish that same level of attention was given to the performance itself. Esox has the makings for something evocative and brilliant; at this point, it’s just a matter of matching the sky-high ambition with a bit more experience. I’ll be more than happy to dive back into the pike-laden waters for future releases, but Watery Grave is a lake I’ve had my fill of.

Recommended tracks: As I Descend Above the Water, The Unbearable Cry of the Sea, Walden
You may also like: Gallowbraid, Nechochwen, October Falls, Botanist
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Independent

Esox is:
– Esox (everything)

1. Livyatan melvillei is a particularly massive extinct species of sperm whale. The inclusion of saltwater sea life here does throw me for a loop a bit as everything up to this point seems to be focused on freshwater, but it should be pointed out that this is a redux of a previous Esox track, so its aquatic idiosyncrasy is not entirely surprising. ↩︎