This is the second album from Canadian death metallers Egregore.
It Echoes in the Wild is brought to us by current/ex-members of Mitochondrion and Funeral Circle, and is a light-swallowing maelstrom of black/death metal horror. Egregore have a well-developed personality, and this record allows them 48 minutes to express this freely. The results are impressive.
The music is, in essence, old-school death metal at heart, but before it lost its experimental streak and occasional thrash influences. Add to this a blackened flavour, and a clear love of classic heavy metal, you have a recipe that’s unexpectedly tasty and satisfying.
As a loose starting point, think of bands who allowed themselves to branch out into uncharted waters, like Morbid Angel and Mithras, (and maybe Nile or Melechesh here and there). Then, throw in a touch of Death, shades of Absu, and maybe a pinch of something like Akercocke. Finally, inject just the right amount of the unhinged nightmare essence of Portal or Teitanblood, and you have a rough guide to where It Echoes in the Wild is coming from.
It Echoes in the Wild is an exercise in restraint, either to a greater or lesser extent. Sometimes very controlled, sometimes utterly feral, frequently a mix of both, there is a feeling of chaos being channelled into something esoteric and occult.
The songs are creative and engaging. They present a death metal base that’s familiar enough to be appealing, yet build on this strong foundation with a variety of tools and materials. In this way, Egregore craft songs that are ancient and timeless, with malign atmospheres and dark atypical features. The band manage to create music that has both instant appeal and longer lasting substance, which is not an easy thing to do. Your first listen to It Echoes in the Wild will be an enjoyable one, but each subsequent spin will simply be better and better.
Oh, and Egregore have riffs. Buckets and buckets of them. Yes, they deal in mood and pace, in arcane darkness and unusual songwriting, but goodness gracious do they have riffs. There’s a myriad of solos too, each blazing with colour and ripe with emotive richness. Vocally the band offer up almost every style of vocal you could ask for at one point or another.
It Echoes in the Wild is a strong piece of work, in all aspects – songwriting, performances, production values. There is a lot to explore across these ten tracks, and a wealth of great music to experience. Each song has a character of its own, with its own ideas and sonic points of interest, yet fits in seamlessly with all of the others. Egregore have produced a record to savour over time and to truly get to know. Balancing an esoteric nature and pervasive malignant atmospheres with well-crafted hooks and charismatic presence isn’t easy, but Egregore have made it look like it is.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 