Esoctrilihum Builds a Pantheon and Sings Through It on Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur

The French project’s new mainline album gives each track to a different entity from Asthâghul’s private cosmology, and hands more of the music than ever to a high, unsteady falsetto.

Asthâghul, the French musician behind Esoctrilihum, has released close to forty records in a decade, several of them enormous: Astraal Constellations of the Majickal Zodiac, one of eight Esoctrilihum releases in 2023, runs past two hours. Annochiül Xar Sorthïlazur is the mainline follow-up to Ghostigmatah – Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm, with the project’s dark ambient, electro-folk and DSBM detours set aside. It is also the record where the voice changes most.

Each track summons a different entity from Asthâghul’s personal pantheon, each attached to a negative mental state, anxiety and depression and anger among them, and each serves as a ritual for expelling it. He has said his occult practice and his songwriting are bound together,