There’s an elemental feel about Egregore’s It Echoes In The Wild album, which whips you up in its cyclonic whirl from the offset. You get a sense of something much more primeval that emanates from the music. A coarse mix of blackened death metal, it’s an unforgiving assault on the senses, yet its raw elements provide an emotional response which is rare within these circles.
The first thing you notice on opener proper ‘Voice On The West Wind’ is how the guitars never settle into anything resembling a traditional riff and that they are constantly changing and evolving. It’s chaotic, yet somehow makes sense. This chaos is further extemporised on the later ‘Craven Acts Of Desperate Men’ which starts traditionally enough before descending into an almost free form fall into what could only be described as Dante’s Inferno: the musical. All hope is lost here, and you can only hang on for dear life.
Great song title aside, ‘From The Yawning Crevasse Shrieks a Transmorphic Gale’ also finds time to become a showcase for the vocals, with growls and whispers forming a creepy litany to the grinding riffs. ‘Corsairs Of The Death Gulf’ becomes an almost introductory instrumental (albeit two minutes long) to the ferocious ‘Nightmare Cartographer’ which is all frantic guitars and drums before developing into some prime metal which isn’t a million miles away from King Diamond. There is definitely a storytelling similarity within the songs. It all then starts to get very dramatic with the roaring ‘Six Doors Guard The Original Knowledges’. You really do feel like you are trapped within the music, such is the unnatural force of it all.
The music becomes ever more frantic as the album reaches its climax with ‘Servants Of The Second Death’ offering up some perfect headbanging material. It all comes to a suitably over the top ending with the title track ripping through riffs like there is no tomorrow. It’s the perfect end to an album which transports you away from everyday life into an almost living, breathing entity where you become a fly on the wall to the horrors and tales that unfold. That elemental feeling seeping into all your innate fears and exacerbating them as your response to the album. Fantastic stuff.
