Astraal Constellations of the Majickal Zodiac

For the tenth album by French one-man black metal project Esoctrilihum, Asthâghul recorded a triple album of his mannered atmospheric black metal with a dose of experimentalism. The first disc/part of "Astraal Constellations..." can simply be described as a mixture of Summoning and Cradle Of Filth. Esoctrilihum rushes from one extreme to another: epic and beautiful slow passages alternate with aggressive machine gun-like blastbeat drumming and fast shattering guitar riffs. In both cases we get an unparalleled ominous atmosphere – Asthâghul very well manages to convey the occult component of his opus through musical means.

The guitar, however, had to be sacrificed, most basically it serves as a backing for the keyboards. The second part at first gives the impression of a more aggressive stage of the process, but technically everything is the same here, just the keyboards do not reign all the way, guitar with tough riffage dominates quite often, and in such passages an analogy with Absu suggests itself.

The third part also does not bring any revolutionary changes, everything is the same, just there are only 2 songs this time, each lasting 21 minutes. To be honest, it is not very clear why it was necessary to make a fuss. A lot of effort and words have gone into what could be expressed and achieved by one well thought-out album.

There are indeed many very good tunes here, but that doesn't mean that they all had to be stuffed into such a terribly long album. Even the variety of riffs (they change very often) is lost in this manifoldness, especially considering that some pieces are glued to each other indiscriminately. In one word, quality is sacrificed for quantity: we get 3 almost identical Esoctrilihum albums, but no excellent ones.

Metalegion # 13