LITURGY — Aesthethica (review)

LITURGY — Aesthethica album cover Album · 2011 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Phonebook Eater
6/10

"Aesthethica" is a huge, pondering, and intellectual Black Metal album.

Liturgy are an American Black Metal band, and “Aesthethica” would now be their sophomore LP, which got a little more attention than the debut, “Renihilation”. From their music there’s been some talk about something called “Transcendental Black Metal”, but the term is very generic and vague. Nevertheless, the music I hear is repetitive, hypnotic, yet also quite lively, and it does give some justice to this obscure subgenre. But I believe the results for this album are not quite as good as they should be.

It’s been called also “Hipster Black Metal” because of it’s appeal to the indie/alternative crowd more than the Black Metal one. Despite this ridiculous tag, it is true that Black Metal fans have avoided this, because of it’s popularity among a different crowd. A good and simple way to describe the music on this album is that it is a mix between the regular attributes of BM mixed with the stop and goes and time changes of Math Rock. The rhythms are hammering and extremely fast, like usually Black Metal is, but then it is more alert and less atmospheric than usual, because of it’s time changes, where the Math kicks in. The vocals as always are shrieking, but there are odd moments in some tracks where there are some sort of monotonous chants that literally sing one note over and over again. The musicianship though is really good, from the vocals to the drums, which are able to play syncopated rhythms and change immediately and abruptly time signatures like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Aesthethica” is a huge, pondering and intellectual album, a reason why some thoughtless people have snubbed it. In here music is repetition, it is hypnotizing people, it is putting the listener into a big huge ball of confusion. But this ball is so pre-schemed and thought, that you don’t always feel the roller coaster effect, as if the music was more spontaneous, I might have enjoyed it more. When there is too much effort in making a piece of music, you can sense that.

However the good moments are many: “Generation”, despite it’s repetition, is a hypnotic piece that shows how synchronized and how well the band is able to play together as a group. Some melodies are noticeable amidst the confusion, especially in “Returner”, the epic sounding opener of the album “High Gold”, or “Tragic Laurel”. Many songs in this album go from decent to really good, but to me there are no amazing moments that blow me away. This however makes it a more solid and consisting album for me, despite being not more than decent.

“Aesthethica” is wrongfully judged by metal fans, and frankly I’m surprised to see it snubbed. It would be a great listen for whoever loves Black Metal and Math Rock.
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