“Ghostigmatah – Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulo¨m” is the tenth album by ESOCTRILIHUM released by I, Voidhanger Records, and its ten compositions seal the blood pact between the artist and the label.
Often accused of having no sense of measure, Asthâghul churns out a new double album that is grandiose, symphonic, psychedelic, liturgical, delirious. In a word, excessive. “Ghostigmatah” is a prism that reflects every single nuance of the ESOCTRILIHUM sound, from the bombastic black/death of the masterpiece “Eternity Of Shaog” to the death/doom deviations of “Dy’th Requiem For The Serpent Telepath,” up to the recent psych-folk metal explorations of “Do¨th-Derniàlh.” To his typical mix of electric guitars, synths and percussions Asthâghul also adds organ, kantele, harp, theremin and hammered dulcimer, while maturing his vocals equally divided between cavernous growls, black metal screeches and clean chants.
Conceptually, the album is divided into four chapters, each of which tells a ritual stage in the long journey of dead souls towards the jaws of the 8-eyed psychopomp Abxulo¨m, who will finally deliver them to eternal nothingness. A post-mortem ritual that is told in the secret grimoire of the Ghostigmatah, a sort of modern Necronomicon that constitutes another piece in ESOCTRILIHUM’s phantasmagorical visionary world, this time built on the suggestions of the wonderful cover painting by Alan “Medusawolf” Brown.
It is a nightmarish, mystical dimension of death beyond time and space, inhabited by an artist who, through his music, fearlessly lets its dark light filter into our reality.
