15.05.21 | Bill Peel
Art school black metal, complex and powerful; Brooklyn hipster bullshit, breathtakingly original; Pitchfork bait, unbelievable musicianship. All of these things are true of ‘Aesthethica,’ Liturgy’s second and most (in)famous album, a 70-minute epic of avant-garde black metal. The only thing that everyone can agree on about this 2011 record is that it is anything but mediocre.
If you want purple prose about frontwoman
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s “piercing shrieks” and
Greg Fox’s phenomenal drumming, check out contemporaneous reviews on ‘
Aesthethica‘ from Pitchfork, The Quietus and Anthony Fantano instead. That’s not to say I don’t think this LP deserves the praise heaped upon it a decade ago – it does. In fact, I think I love it! But, as someone interested in the cultural politics of black metal, I’m not going to use this opportunity to tread over old ground. Instead, this is about the sizeable influence that