The Pernicious Enigma is psychedelic, but not in the happy and groovy sense. The album resembles a bad acid trip, darkly hypnotic in its delivery. It is not an exaggeration to state that this album is literally physically unnerving and terrifyingly hallucinogenic. Esoteric is music that is clearly seething with misanthropic hatred, the nihilistic tendencies of which is backed up by the contorted genius of its members. If there ever was a band to succeed in channelling their own deranged visions and horrifically distorted nightmares into the medium of music, it would be Esoteric. This is an album that will be understood and appreciated by very few people, but for those that do, this is absolutely without a doubt one of the most essential extreme music releases, ever.

The Pernicious Enigma showcases Esoteric to be as uncompromising and original as ever. The sound is richer, as the band has paid more attention to incorporating spacey keyboards and samples into their music. However, they are still just a background for the extremely slow drums, dissonant guitars, and massively processed vocals (probably nearly every studio effect was used). Most of the songs are around 12-16 minutes, so this album is definitely an exercise in patience (and pain) and will probably be mostly of interest to hardcore doom junkies. A band that will be understood by few, indeed.

The music on this double CD is so slow, depressed, sinister and downright doom to the core that we may have to redefine the term! Beside a few execptional up-tempo parts all of Esoteric's music is very slow, large and draws strength from your more depressed and suicidal emotions. Vocals are rough, hateful suffering growls and screams with lots and lots and lots of effects. Over 115 minutes of absolutely non-intense, yet somewhat brutal and very heavy doom! This is what you pay for here, and that's what you get! For those into the genre, worth checking out! For those who thought that Cathdral's first album was too slow and depressive, don't even think about it!