Musaeum Esotericum

Musaeum Esotericum is very different from Profanum's previous releases. "Flowers.." was more of a well produced black metal album with a fair amount of ambient influence. "Eminence.." was their album that really showed their creativity and innovation of seldom using guitars - the theme and feel of the songs were very dark, evil, and sinister. Musaeum Esotericum still follows that trend from Eminence but now there's a huge emphasis on the classical influence.

This particular album may still be feel as dark, and it is, but the songs generally have a more romantic feel to them. These guys must have been heavily inspired by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner etc when they started writing this album. You have your violins, bass, cellos, etc. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought I was in Europe in the 1600's/1700's. Because of this aspect, Musaeum Esotericum comes off as intelligent, clean, prideful, and impressive. The classical elements of Musaeum Esotericum are very cleanly produced and well-polished.

Of course, the album isn't all classical. There are a fair amount of metal parts. First start with the vocals. They are either clean spoken, harsh spoken, or fairly deep pitched, harsh singing. as far as the singing goes, it's pretty distorted along with the rest of the metal elements. I'm tempted to think of this as experimental black metal. While the song titles seem to be in Latin, I think the lyrics have a Polish tongue to them.

The rest of the metal aspects are pretty hard to describe. Profanum goes out their way to minimize their guitar work. It's possible there are some guitars there but the production gets so distorted it's hard to tell. Drums play the largest role in the metal aspects, but even those beats are a bit distorted. The metal parts do come in pretty randomly. Someone might think this is stupid, but I think it makes each song more interesting and rather unpredictable. Besides, it's not that spontaneous.

With this album, the classical parts never occur at the same time as the metal parts. That is, it's not mixed, giving the album a more black and white feel to it.

Musaeum Esotericum only has two tracks, but I thought this was a good idea. Both tracks are exceptionally long (unfortunately the total time is less than 40 minutes) so I think the release comes off feeling more epic. these tracks could've been split up but I think if that was the case, the album would feel like it was missing some extra punch.

My favorite part on the album is the first 5 minutes of the first track. There's an incredible build up and coordination between the vocals, classical parts, and metal parts. I'd rather not ruin the fire of the album by dissecting every part of both songs so I'll leave that experience up to the listener.

If you're looking for something well produced, intellectual sounding, and filled with dark themes, Musaeum Esotericum may be for you. It will be different than anything you're used to hearing for sure.

Now, this is my first review so please disregard any lack of knowledge or inaccurate statements.

That aside. Upon finding that this band used violins and pianos in place of guitar and bass I was obsessed. I managed to get my hands on this seemingly rare CD. When I mean for people that enjoy classical, I mean it. Vocals do not start until about 8:26 on track one, and when they do, they have a distorted, fuzzy, metallic sound, hard to explain, really. Unfortunately, their vocals do not last long, though I can’t say having more would fit in, so I cannot deduct much for that. Much like the first song, vocals do not begin until 2:45, and before that is a voice that sounds like it’s coming off a loudspeaker. I cannot say this is a filler effect, because all of it builds up to the moments of when the vocals begin, dotted here and there are sound effects that must have some relation to the music. I have no idea what either of songs are about. It is in either Latin, or the native language of Poland, or both, as far as I determined in the booklet included. Which is rather vivid and dark, perfectly matching the atmosphere created by the music, and quite long. The classical music element is wonderful, along with the rest, and quite sadly, short. The two songs themselves are long, but only add up to 38 minutes and 31 seconds. It leaves me waiting earnestly for their next release.