Esoteric - Esoteric Emotions - The Death Of Ignorance FLAC

Judging by the images at present it looks like there were at least two versions...
Mine's a clear-shell, also included a sheet separate from the j-card with lyrics to all songs except for B2.

I guess you could call this doom metal, but ego-death metal might be more apt. Esoteric throw elements of doom metal, death metal, psychedelic rock, prog rock, experimental/noise music, ambient, and classic rock into the blender and hit puree. The resulting sludge can only be likened to a bizarre fusion of Thergothon and Guru Guru—it goes off like a supernova in slow-mo, disintegrating all the hipstered-out stoner metal revivalists of the present day into farts in the solar wind. While there are superfast death metal sections interspersed with the druggy doom crawl, this album is still incredibly out there—this is metal for exploring the furthest reaches of hyperspace. My favorite track, “Expectations of Love,” begins with some chunky Sabbath-style riffs and doomy growls before picking up speed in a thrashy death metal bridge. Then the band stomps the phaser pedals (and probably every other fucking FX pedal in existence) and the jam gets sucked into a dizzying fractal vortex. The most bowel-churning downtuned mammoth of a doom riff lurches along while the lead guitar launches into a lightning-fast solo that’s deliberately out of tune with the rhythm guitars and the bass, though it all strangely harmonizes somehow. The combination of the snail-paced main riff and warp-speed soloing makes you feel as if your mind is being pulled in two directions at once, a feeling that’s only reinforced by the unconventional harmonics. The two-minute section of the track stretching from roughly 4:30 to 6:50 is to my ears one of the finest moments in doom metal—it’s at once bleakly mystical and unbelievably heavy. “Eyes of Darkness” is another brilliant monster—the track bursts straight out of the gates into a soaring melancholy solo that combines the guitar heroics of classic rock with the misanthropic depression of funeral doom. It doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does. After this opening blitzkrieg, the track shifts gears into a psychedelic death march. There are a number of other standout jams on the album. “In Solitude” has a wonderfully hollow and reverbed-out section that almost verges on shoegaze and post-rock. The monolithic, suicidal riff of “Scarred” keeps winding down to an ever-slower tempo as the drums hit so hard you feel like they’re slamming into your skull. I really hope that this album gets reissued so that more people can hear it. It’s not just a crowning achievement of doom metal; it transcends the genre to become one of the great twisted classics of the psychedelic underground.