Otesanek
Self Titled
8.2
This is one of those few albums that are so hard to put into words, it’s hardly worth trying. It just has to be experienced and literally felt. Featuring ex members of the criminally short lived and brilliant Hassan I Sabbah, Otesanek couldn’t be any further from the Hassan I Sabbah’s chaos core.
For fans of droning doom-noise like SunnO))), Buried at Seas and Khanate, Otesanek is a perfect addition to your collection as this 2 song, 30 minute offering is a grating, gravitational force that compels worlds to collide and galaxies to implode. Slow and crawling are adjectives that don’t even come close to describing Otesanek’s oppressive, throat squeezing sound that lies on your chest with the perpetual weight of Sisyphus’ boulder.
I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of the likes of Khanate and SunO))), but Otesanek add two layers of vocal agony to their sound, that makes them more appealing than just feedback laden noise; an agony filled Mindrot - like scream and an uber deep subterranean growl that each laces the rending notes with both pain and sheer, gargantuan oppression.
The expansive, stark notes are rendered with appropriate levels of feedback, but also vibrate with a tectonic plate shifting low end, both musically and vocally and lyrically. The vast bellows and discordant screams talk of oceanic depths (“Oceans”) and the end of worlds (“Dead in the Park”), with fitting cavernous depth and swelling, earth sundering, drawn out droning riffs. The choking sounds that end the shorter “Oceans” is a fitting climax that actually personifies the emotion tied with listening to this album. The 20-minute “Dead in the Park” made me truly uncomfortable; nervous and gaunt with frayed emotions pummeled into submission by the sheer colossal onus that Otesanek create with their shuddering noise.
Again, not an album worth colorful coloquilisms, as it essentially deadens your senses and leaves you bereft of many thought processes by grinding your subconscious into a pulp with their crushing avoirdupois. What lifts Otesanek slightly from the realm of pure noise is the agonized vocals that give this monster some appeal to slightly less open minded fans (like me) that find pure two-note noise unfathomable, and make Otesanek flirt with a more classic doom/death sound that gives you some glimmer of warm familiarity amid the overbearing density.
Ugh.
