Esben and The Witch are back with a new album. The follow up to 2014’s ‘A New Nature’, ‘Older Terrors’ is an evocative fourth effort that sees the band take their haunting atmospherics to a new level. One third of the trio, Rachel Davies talks through the release track by track: from opening gambit ‘Sylvan’, to finale ‘The Reverist’.
1. Sylvan
We wanted to paint a picture of a forest in flames. Of wild destruction, spectacular and terrifying. The calm amidst the ancient pines shattered by an insatiable desire, all-consuming, all-devouring and with a raging intensity so fierce it can set anything on fire. Ultimately, as the flames engulf the trees, it is a song about searching for meaning and even beauty in a burning world. As the track gathers pace, the fire grows, until there is nothing left but smoke and ash. A moment to reflect on the damage done, to marvel in both awe and horror at the primal power of something so uncontrollable.
2. Marking The Heart Of A Serpent
For centuries the snake has captured our collective imagination. Our deepest fears, our darkest sins, immortalised. This is our serpent song, a talisman if you will. We wanted the music to envelop the listener, a trance like journey from the soothing to the savage. A charm for the snake we all wrestle with, to coax and calm and find out where its open jaws lead. Who is the master, the magnetizer? The snake or the charmer? This is a duel with the fiend that lurks inside all of us.
3. The Wolf’s Sun
An ode to Luna, a blazing white rock. We find ourselves drawn to and driven by a night lust as old as the firmament itself, the moon forever pulling us towards it. The first chapter of the song marks the laden swagger of the satellite, a pendulous, ominous beacon. Switching to the second movement, the maniacal march of its wide-eyed disciples, entranced by its heady glow. Rampaging with hearts as swollen as the moon itself, ‘Light it is blooming, A madness consuming, Inside your head, Inside your hands. In love! I’m raptured!’
4. The Reverist
This is our dreamscape, the finale. A voyage through the night sky, between the stars and beyond the veil. An escape to a thin place, safe from harm, where we can travel freely in a shimmering bliss, for a moment indulging in unadulterated, boundless fantasy. A respite to the constant noise and clatter of the feuding earth that grinds beneath us. This is an apocalyptic vision of a possible Utopia, be that in dreams or another, higher reality.
Esben and The Witch’s new album ‘Older Terrors’ is out now. They’ll tour the UK early next year, catch them at: London Electrowerkz (18th February), Bristol The Exchange (20th), Manchester Soup Kitchen (21st), Brighton The Hope & Ruin (22nd).