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Esben & The Witch - Hexagons

Esben & The Witch - Hexagons
EP Reviews

The pioneering potency of Esben & The Witch is dominant throughout.



Label: Matador Records
Released: 7th November 2011
Reviewer: Joanie Eaton
With all of this sexy, moody vampire shit (secretly, we all love it) engulfing the entire world, it wasn’t long before the bands of, shall we say, ‘a darkened nature’ were to arise from their makeshift graves and into the mainstream. With their debut album ‘Violent Cries’ released earlier this year, Esben & The Witch skulked into the attention of every solemn soul, trailing behind them a dark vapor of whispers questioning whether they were the new ‘Goth’ kids on the block or just another bunch of temperamental, hormone-charged kiddy winks.

Their follow up EP ‘Hexagons’ is what I imagine The Thing and Freddy Krueger deem as appropriate dinner party music. In fact, in certain parts it does sound like Frankenstein’s monster and/or Dracula have turned up to sing backing vocals. I keep expecting to hear the guy who speaks in the middle of ‘Thriller’ to step up. Never happens.

There are certain adjectives belonging to the ‘dark side’ of the dictionary that you simply cannot avoid when talking about Esben & The Witch: all six tracks (really playing on the hexagon motif here) on the atmospherically stimulated EP are hauntingly ethereal with Rachel Davies' hypnotic, eerie wailing angelic one moment, and the next genuinely demoniac.

Significantly darker than ‘Violent Cries’, the pioneering potency of Esben & The Witch is dominant throughout. Its minimalism is completely charming, yet drowning at times.

Esben & the Witch are available to play at rituals and animal sacrifices.*

* This is a lie. Rating: 7/10
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