In the trees, the north wind blows
To bring forth your faire hands to me
Lock up your greene heart, we are null
Inscription of your shattered soul
Oakland-born, now Portland-based outfit ESSES returns with their third LP, Pain at the Altar of Jest, their most expansive and intentional work to date. Written after a move to the Pacific Northwest, the record bears the fingerprints of shifting landscapes, damp skies, and a band transformed by new blood. John Chap joins on guitar and pedal steel, while Kel steps forward as both front-person and guitarist. The result feels rebuilt, as if the group burned down their house to study the embers, then raised something stronger, luminous in its ruin.
“My inspiration was pulled from experiences of sacred places I have visited over the past few years, connecting to ancestral magick, nature, dreams, deep feelings of loneliness, and pulling oneself out of the dark,” says Correll. That dark is not an empty void but a crucible, shaping lyric and tone with clarity and care.
The album opens with “Three Sisters,” a somber siren song that arrives like a rite chanted in candlelight. Its breath recalls the spectral intimacy of The Shroud, Lyrica, and Miranda Sex Garden, where the pull of family and secrecy lies just beyond the door. With an intro that sounds like a Mongolian throat singer, Mirage Artist carries the nocturnal pulse of old-school gothic rock and deathrock, swept away by its heavy guitars, intense drum patterns, and wind-chilled, scythe-like vocals. The song captures the tension of alleys and broken glass, mirages of love dissolving into junkyard silence, the faint glimmer of fae whispers beneath a city moon.
With Low, the ember glows; its restraint echoes the dreamlike gravitas of Faith and the Muse. Drifting like a dark lullaby, with its soft vocals and guitar strumming, images of Ash and coals press close, as a song unfolds, telling a tale of defeat, weighted with a desire for connection. A Greene Heart, with its ethereal goth meets western shogaze guitar tones, conjures imagery of a moss-covered cathedral haunted by Celtic archetypes: Aine, Cailleach; its seasonal dialogue recalling the rituals where fertility and fracture share the same stage.
The jazzy and atmospheric “The Twelfth Thread,” driven by rhythmic drums, hi-hats, and pulsing bass, walks a fine line between intimacy and myth. Spears, giants, and old wars swell like an epic Siouxsie-like invocation, yet inside its rhythm is the fragile breath of forgiveness. The Burrow delves into an ethereal plane, with guitar tones and percussion evoking a blend of dream pop and the ghosts of David Lynch. The lyrics are etched in reeds and black seas, names inscribed in stone, waiting for stormlight to reveal their meaning.
Opening with the distorted pulse of bass guitar, Cavern of Souls moves subterranean—a hymn of roots and water, a murmur of Siouxsie-like spectral insistence, with guitar accents stabbing through the drum’s steady rhythm before spiraling upward. Here, Kel conjures a world of concealment and revelation, bodies entangled in secrecy and longing, urging surrender to both intimacy and erasure. Its tides of concealment and release feel at once deeply intimate and immeasurably vast.
Finally, Cracked Lands closes the record with grandeur: spires, altars, deserts of illusion. It carries the apocalyptic majesty of classic gothic rock and early 70s heavy metal, with a touch of the Shangri-Las in its DNA. Its bleak incantations summon a realm where crowns splinter, faith erodes, and weary souls search for connection amid the wreckage of broken kingdoms.
Tracked with Adam Pike at Toadhouse Studios and mastered by Stephan Hawkes in Los Angeles, ESSES’s Pain at the Altar of Jest is an album stripped of filler; just raw, carved intention. Its lyric world is vivid, a mythology of family, faith, and fracture. What begins as incantation ends as invitation, asking us to meet among the ruins with eyes open and hearts, however fractured, still alive.
Listen to Pain at the Altar of Jest below and order the album here or here via Seeing Red Records.
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