Before becoming one of the most well-known and well-rounded funeral doom bands, Esoteric was playing an extremely heavy version of the delicate funeral doom they'd perfect on later records, bordering on death-doom metal. This, their first demo, is an hour and fifteen minutes of very depressing, very smothering death-doom, and despite some shoddy work with the vocals and some long-winded numbers, it's quite good. There isn't much in the way of melody here, but when it shows up, it really does, like in the opening minutes of "Eyes Of Darkness". The atmosphere is hollow and constant, but it doesn't hit home as much due to the recording quality of the demo. The vocals are very good when there are no effects done to them, but are actually kind of grating and irritating with them. Mostly, though, it's just monolithic, slow-burning death-doom. It is admirable that there is variety to be found in the songs themselves, but the moments are far between each other. They're just working out the kinks, and despite that, the demo is pretty decent.
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