Esben and the Witch
Nowhere

THE REVIEW

There are strange, dark, ancestral woods, refuges for our most arcane fears. These places are populated by creatures that usually reside only in our minds, in our paranoias, in our nightmares, beings fed by our tears and shivers, by the cries from when we were children and were afraid to let go of the warm and protective hand of our parents, but also by the uncertainties we live every day, "as adults", thrown into a world we cannot understand.
These dark woods are leafy, they do not let light filter through, they are lush in a wild and anarchic way, with plants that climb over each other to seize a glimpse of the sun. In them, nothing is as it seems, so if you walk through the foliage, you might encounter a cynical Little Red Riding Hood who, having realized that the grandmother is actually a ravenous werewolf, does not hesitate to kill her brutally. Sadistic nobles torture and torment their subjects instead of protecting them from the forest creatures, while young adventurers do not hesitate to strike their blades into the trembling bodies of elves they have defeated with deceitful tricks.
Nothing is as it seems, we have said, so you might even feel pity for the Beast abandoned by Beauty after the poor creature is seduced by the girl, only to find itself robbed of the precious rose, its only hope of salvation. The poor wolves that raise abandoned children in the woods, only to be slaughtered by those same creatures, now grown, whom they had saved, or the vampires who fall in love with their victims and when least expected are stabbed in the heart... All these poor beings seem almost the victims in these dark woods, where everything seems upside down.
What scares us the most is often not the monster, the deformed, the only apparently threatening one. True terror, fear, despair, these sensations grip us with cold hands when it is our certainties, our strong points, our heroes who turn out to be sordid arrivists or cynical traitors. When, "as adults", you find yourself alone facing things bigger than you, like death, uncertainty about tomorrow, the "what ifs" that present themselves every day, in those moments you think with nostalgia and melancholy of those ugly and scary monsters that were always the scapegoats and catalysts of your fears as a child. You think of them, and deep down, maybe they were the "good" ones, they are the ones who made you grow.
Certain woods are dark, dangerous, but they know how to disguise themselves well, and for this, it is even more difficult to get out once we have mistakenly ventured among the trees.
At the end of 2018, Esben and the Witch (EATW) return, an English trio based in Germany that two years ago gave us the splendid "Older Terrors". The trio can recreate a magical and disorienting atmosphere, whose ingredients are mainly dream pop, post-punk, gothic, post-rock, and a certain dark songwriting. What we get is, in a few words, a journey into nightmares. This "Nowhere" further develops the formula created in the previous album, starting from similar bases but moving towards slightly different directions. Here, our trio targets more intimate and less immediate atmospheres: the fears, the anxieties, in my opinion always the subject of EATW, are here even more insidious, more creeping, less visible. The forest through which Rachel now takes us is even more sinister and frightening if we want to. Slowly, listen after listen, we are captured by the overwhelming melodies and rhythms of our trio, which hit us even more deeply, raising well-hidden doubts and fears. Let's say that with "Older Terrors" our trio told us dark fairy tales, but with "Nowhere" they confront us with real monsters, those truly evil, those scary, and successfully transport us to a world only seemingly less dark, actually terribly annihilating.
The album requires many listens to be understood, but its not prohibitive length works in its favor by aiding its assimilation. Esben and the Witch reaffirm once again as one of the most eccentric and "particular" bands to emerge in recent years.