Labels: Electric Human Project
Review by: Alex Deller
The cover of this cd depicts two rams with their spiraling horns interlocked, a perfect metaphor for the music within: a tireless, bludgeoning collision that jars bones and knocks combatants senseless.
Having cut away the vestigial traces of Sabbath and the occasional bursts of powerviolence that interspersed their demo, Otesanek now populate that gloomy sanctum inhabited by the likes of Khanate and Corrupted, a place of mountainous sounds that rise and fall like the lifecycles of continents, narrated by voices that hollow themselves out in a series of roars, gasps and choking noises.
Rather than any comprehendible structure, the music has a weary, faltering quality that seems to go nowhere at all while making absolute murder of the journey. You can almost visualize some poor sap stumbling blindly through a labyrinth, pausing unexpectedly for breath, slumping despairingly to the ground and backtracking to numerous forked paths with flagging steps, hopelessly lost and ultimately doomed to some terrible, lonely fate. At times the music grinds to such an abrupt halt that you might be fooled into thinking they’d given up the ghost entirely, only for another exhausted chord, groan or drumbeat to be wrenched from some browbeaten player, setting the terrible thing back in motion once again and slamming the door shut on any hopes for a moments’ peace.
These two songs may last for just half an hour, but don’t let this lead you to suspect this is some kind of cakewalk. It isn’t. What Otesanek have done is construct a murderous test of endurance that will leave you mangled, worthless and wishing you’d never been born.