Review: Esoctrilihum – Dy’th Requiem For The Serpent Telepath

Style: Avant-Garde Black Metal (harsh vocals)
Review by: Callum
Country: France
Release date: May 21, 2021

With his sixth full-length album in four years, Asthâghul – the mysterious writer, producer, vocalist, and sole musician behind Esoctrilihum – shows no signs of slowing down. Perhaps more impressive than the enviable work ethic that enables a full release every 8 months on average, is the consistency in structure and quality. Each record has been long, dense, and centrally composed around madness-inducing, cerebral black metal. The album art is also consistently fantastic and fittingly unsettling. Dy’th Requiem for the Serpent Telepath is no exception. Clocking in at 1 hour and 15 minutes, DRFTST retains the black-hole density and psychedelic black metal core of its predecessors, and the album art would make a stunning addition to a merfolk Magic: The Gathering deck. It does feel like with the succession of each record, Asthâghul is finding slightly more focus to the overall sound of the albums as well as adding a stunning variety of musical styles and instruments. Like a rolling snowball, from the alien atmo-black origins of Mystic Echo From A Funeral Dimension, more and more old school death metal elements got picked up across the next three records. 2020’s Eternity of Shaog, critically acclaimed across the metal underground, took the atmospherics to new levels incorporating strings and orchestral elements that brought more dynamics and maturity. Finally, DRFTST picks up doom metal elements as well as expanding upon all that has featured before. The snowball has become bigger, more grand, more ambitious, somewhat less aggressive as the jagged edges are smoothed and the track it’s making a little more discernible and focused.

To make the long run-time slightly easier to handle, the record is broken into four segments of three tracks apiece concerning different stages of the death, transfiguration, and reincarnation of the eponymous Serpent. Not that any kind of narrative is immediately discernible through the extra-dimensional track names nor the constructed language of the lyrics, however there are somewhat perceptible stylistic shifts between each segment. I usually try to refrain from merely describing each track on an album, but due to the sheer density of this work, for my own sanity, this seems the reasonable way to unpack the record.

The first trilogy of songs are an effective refresher of what Esoctrilihum has morphed into up to this point in time, while incrementally introducing some new instrumental and stylistic additions. “Ezkikur”, for example, opens with an atypically groovy marching riff that then breaks into a more atmo-black riff with whispered and distinguishable half-choked, half-gurgled vocals and the strings we became accustomed to on Eternity of Shaog. Added instrumentation is used far more liberally here, even horns reminiscent of Summoning or Caladan Brood are layered over the final chugging riff. “Salhn” then gives us the first taste of slow, dark doom-inspired riffs that feature heavily later on. Then in “Tyurh”, the classic death metal sounds from earlier records come back in full force only with chamber organ, occult chanting, and church bell synths that add a distinctly hymnal or ritualistic atmosphere.

The second triad exemplifies my point of there being more focus in this work and I would argue this is the most accessible segment to those unfamiliar with Esoctrilihum heretofore. The riffs in “Baahl Duthr” are more coherent, with slightly clearer guitar tones, and the tempo slows down to a more bearable pace toward the end of the song for a piano-laden funeral dirge, and onward into the funeral doom intro of “Agakuh”. “Eginbaal”, then, acts as a reminder that this is an album rooted in black metal, despite the midway shift when a slow, lone, forceful guitar breaks in followed by the rare ‘harmonised’ guitars and booming double bass drums that join in as if from the middle of an empty cathedral.

“Dy’th,” one of the first singles released for the album, opens the third trio. As a single, one may have been misled into thinking that the experimentation, the avant-garde, and the disorienting incoherence of previous albums were over with. In relative terms, it’s a fairly straightforward, though fantastic, death metal piece before the symphonic, almost triumphant, outro sets in. This track, and the following purely orchestral “Craânag” serve as welcome palette cleansers given that there are still 24 minutes left of the record. “Zhaïc Daemon” rounds out the set with a culmination of everything heard so far: blisteringly fast black metal, outstanding riffs, layered vocals that range between whispers, chants, and shrieks, oodles of strings and piano, and a seemingly signature mid-song shift to death and doom.

Lo, the final section. Asthâghul has boldly saved the most experimental and ‘out-there’ for last. “Nominès Haàr” is a blackened death metal monstrosity, potentially the fastest of the album, and near-relentlessly so. “Xuiotg” is again an unabating, obscure, psychedelic nightmare that builds to a climactic bout of inhuman and tormented screaming before ending with yet more funereal organs, synths, and chanting. The refreshingly short album closer, “Hjh’at,” rounds things out with an off-kilter, violin soaked atmospheric dirge.

Asthâghul continues to push boundaries with this latest release. This is weird stuff and it’s 80 minutes long, which is an exhausting amount of time to be pummeled with horrific, Lovecraftian, psychedelic black metal. Thankfully, this is made easier with the increased variance in tempo and styles and inclusion of a healthy amount of headbang-inducing, *chef’s kiss* riffs. For a one-man-band, naturally, the production isn’t flawless, the drums are fairly conspicuously programmed and synthesized instruments are at times quite loud in the mix. However, the DIY aspect and uniqueness of this mix and Asthâghul’s signature gurgly vocals on top of structure- and genre-defying songwriting are what make Esoctrilihum fresh and exciting. Much like the rest of his discography, Dy’th Requiem for the Serpent Telepath is a daunting piece of work and not for the faint of heart, however oddly enough, it may be the most accessible (in places) yet.

Recommended tracks: Zhaïc Daemon, Xuiotg, Baahl Duthur
Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Paysage D’Hiver, Oranssi Pazuzu
Final verdict: 8.5/10

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

Label: I, Voidhanger Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Esoctrilihum is:
– Asthâghul