LITURGY — Aesthethica (review)

LITURGY — Aesthethica album cover Album · 2011 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Aesthethica" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US black metal act Liturgy. The album was released through Thrill Jockey Records in May 2011. The band are quite unusual looking for a black metal act, posing in their regular clothes, looking like everyday college kids, but "Aesthethica" proves that you don´t have to look like a Norwegian troll smeared with corpsepaint or a zealot looking eastern European pagan persona, to play some furious sounding black metal.

With the image talk out of the way, let´s talk about the music. The music on "Aesthethica" is a chaotic yet atmospheric sounding type of black metal, featuring a raw yet professional and powerful sound production. The vocals are high pitched raspy screaming and usual black metal traits like blast beating and tremolo picking are also part of the band´s sound. Another US black metal act in Krallice occasionally comes to mind because of the excessive tremolo guitar dualling, but Liturgy generally have a lighter sound than Krallice. The "lighter" sound also results in the music having a more accessible quality than most other chaotic/atmospheric sounding black metal acts on the scene. This is of course not easy listening in any way, but there are hooks in the music which makes it more memorable than the music of most of their peers. Liturgy also venture into other musical territories though and it´s great for the variation of the album when a track like "Generation" takes us into instrumental mathcore territory or a track like "Veins of God" takes us into sludge metal ditto. "Aesthethica" actually prove to be quite the unpredictable size and I´m kept on my toes for the duration of the 65:56 minutes long album. The band make a few misteps with the shorter guitar noodling track "Helix Skull" and the a capella choir track "Glass Earth", but otherwise I´d say the album is of a pretty high quality throughout.

The musicianship is impeccable. Liturgy are technically a really well playing act.

"Aesthethica" is probably the kind of black metal album that will divide fans of the genre. Not as such because of the music featured on the album, but more because of Liturgy´s image, which reeks of anything but black metal integrity. But conventions are meant to be broken right? Well at least I don´t have a problem with these guys looking like "regular" folks, if that´s what suit them. Their music doesn´t suffer one bit from it and "Aesthethica" deserves a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating.
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UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Yeah I did read your review, which was actually what animated me to give the album a listen. I think it´s a strong and rather bold release. I actually thought about giving this a full 4 :-)
adg211288 wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I think a statement of "did we listen to the same album?" is appropriate here.

Always interesting to read a different point of view.

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