The Earth Is The Sky, the 2015 sophomore album from Swedish miserabilists The Moth Gatherer, gave post-Metal a real kick up the arse: its spacey, synth-drenched starkness oozed intensity, passion, and musicality, and possessed natural – if occasionally long-winded – invention. Latest long-player Esoteric Oppression (both Agonia Records), their first without founder member Alex Stjernfeldt, sees that sparkle given an added cohesion which can only enhance their burgeoning reputation.
The first of five resounding tracks, ‘The Drone Kingdom’ begins with distant and, well, droning chords, the atmosphere a dark subterranean rumble. When the riff and rhythms kick in it’s as if they’ve always been there, so comfortably do they ease into the template. Victor Wegeborn’s pained roar is as emphysemic as ever while wailing Eastern vocals from Barst’s Messy Mathi really pique the emotions, the whole a cosmic display of ice-cold sorrow evoking Cult Of Luna at their expansive best.
‘Motionless In Oceania’, meanwhile, sees the synth effects come to the fore, creating barren soundscapes over which Ronny Westphal’s guitar chimes out the lightning bolts. The rhythmic patterns, albeit heavy and occasionally brutal, are so progressive yet organic, while the overall feel is powerful without producing the shirt-ripping grief of some of the band’s counterparts.
The pulsing sample and riff of ‘Utopia’ provide some of the album’s most chilling moments, slowing to a Doom-like density while Wegeborn tears his soul and larynx apart, with pulverising drumbeats and tolling bells raining masonry down upon him. The coda is a series of shimmering spikes rammed through the body with huge force, completely at odds with the lowing notes and keys used to introduce the ensuing ‘The Failure Design’.
Soon this rises to a destructive, malfunctioning beast with burning resentment in its heart, its flailing anger borne of deep pain and sadness which is expressed in Westphal’s emotive leadwork. Its denouement is a devastating pause for breath, the exhausted body surveying the damage done.
This is the key to good music: airs and effects that create imagery and add humanity to the sound. Closer ‘Phosphorescent Blight’ possesses a more Industrial edge which eradicates some of this emotion but doesn’t obliterate it, the quieter moments haunting and ominous and signaling the turning off of the light. Drama is what The Moth Gatherer do best and despite a leaning towards the overly clinical at times, they’ve produced another affecting experience here.
7 / 10
PAUL QUINN