FREELOADER: ESCHATON’S AN INSTRUMENT OF DARKNESS
Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Eschaton’s An Instrument of Darkness EP.
Two thoughts that I had while listening to An Instrument of Darkness, the boss two-song EP by Austrian black metal merchants Eschaton:
1) Maybe two songs are enough!
Think about how perfect a two-song release can be. It challenges the band to sum up its strengths in a far more compacted format than with a full-length, while still providing some element of contrast. The listener is rewarded with a release sans fat, and also some insight into what the band values about itself – I’d argue even more insight than you might get in an EP, which can often be a place to throw a bunch of stuff that a band didn’t think would fit on the new album.
Judging from the two songs that Eschaton chose for this EP, they value songwriting skill and recording clarity over all else (both have improved drastically since the band’s 2004 debut, GodMode). From its Behemothian main riff and destructively catchy chorus on to its imperial end, the title track is all self-evident power, delivered in five snappy minutes. “Isolated Intelligence” spreads blustery blastbeats and righteous death metal groove over a longer expanse, and the results are even more captivating. Sounding something like a rawer Keep of Kalessin, the song embroiders regal melody into bulletproof black metal without sacrificing any of the intensity.
There was a time when two songs were all you could get. The single and its B-side was the major platform for recording artists back before the album rose to prominence, and of course that era has been in its death throes for a long time (or to use the proper religious parlance, its eschaton has been immanentized). Of course the fact that most of us get our music digitally renders the issue of “format” moot. But man, this is so satisfying as a two-song release. I get 13 minutes of quality – not enough to get bored or prevent me from spinning it again and again.
2) iTunes Visualizer is AMAZING.
I knew this from the very first time I used it to “set the mood” while attempting to woo a girl. It didn’t work that time. But man, if I were a chick that dug black metal, and some handsome dude showed me footage of a fierce intergalactic battle between two cosmic orbs of light and a sphere of dark matter like I’m seeing right now as I listen to “Isolated Intelligence,” I would totally fuck that guy. The total spot-on-ness of the iTunes Visualizer is just uncanny – Eschaton’s utterly confident, groove-heavy black metal sounds like it’s fit for swallowing worlds, and world-swallowing is exactly what iTunes is showing me. This goes beyond the sonic cues that Visualizer is picking up on in the music. It’s like the program is spiritually attuned to this music.
(4 out of 5 horns up)
-SR
Get An Instrument of Darkness here or here.
