Full Album Premiere & Review: 10,000 Years, Esox Lucifer
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on August 4th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream 10,000 Years’ Esox Lucifer in full. Album is out this Friday, Aug. 7, on Ripple Music.]
The new full-length, Esox Lucifer, from Swedish trio 10,000 Years, is the hard-hitting Västerås outfit’s fourth album in five years. It follows after 2024’s All Quiet on the Final Frontier (review here) and, as each of their records has to this point, manifests new ideas in their sound, which has grown noisier and more progressive in kind, but mostly just grown and found its own path — the sort that makes a phrase like “prog noise” make sense — as one can hear in the breadth of a cut like “Fleur de Sledgehammer,” or the seagull-esque sounds complementing the album intro “Beasts of the Northern Wild,” suitable to the cover art and the album itself, the title of which plays off esox lucius, which a species of pike fish.
And if the band still had as much influence from High on Fire as their 2020 self-titled debut EP (review here) or subsequent debut album, II (review here), one might be tempted to wonder if the pike isn’t a reference to Matt Pike, but the sound of Esox Lucifer reveals this notion as ridiculous. At one point or another, all three current members of 10,000 Years were in a band called Pike, and as far back as 10 years ago, there was discussion of their recording a new album called Esox Lucifer.
Whether this eight-song/35-minute collection is the same album which that group was working on back then, I don’t know, but over time, 10,000 Years have refined their approach to be both more individualized and so that it encompasses more than any single influence could hope to convey. To wit, the Fu Manchu careen with which “Pursuit Special” picks up from “Beasts of the Northern Wild,” made punkish with the shouting vocals of bassist Alex Risberg, joined in the band by guitarist Erik Palm (who also engineered, save for the drum recording, which was helmed by Andreas Morén, while Robert Lamu of Skraeckoedlan mixed and Magnus “Devo” Andersson mastered) and drummer Alvin Risberg — all of whom were in Pike at one point or another — and builds momentum going into “Fleur de Sledgehammer,” which, still with plenty bash-away on offer, shifts into a dreamier back end, spoken/sampled vocals accompanying before the guitar turns to post-metallic squibblies and the solo that finishes. “Church of the Red Museum” is the presumed finisher of side A, and a return to ground after the back half of “Fleur de Sledgehammer,” focusing more on the noise rock aspects of 10,000 Years‘ style, a steady groove holding for the five-minute duration, and while it does get more spacious later on, the intent is clearly toward intensity rather than expanse, and the ending section of “Church of the Red Museum” feeds into that as it makes its way into the fadeout.
This isn’t the most stark example of dynamic that Esox Lucifer presents, but that in itself exemplifies how far the band have come and the subtle balances they’re able to adjust from song to song, as well as the overarching push of the album taken in its entirety. Side B’s start with “Alien Tactics” is pointedly down-to-business, and while the album doesn’t quite fit in the box of a back-and-forth in terms of tempo or stylistic delve, there is a definite shift in character toward the thrashy, double-kick drumming, open verses giving way to heads-down gallop and all.
A scorcher, and by no means 10,000 Years‘ first, but effective in leading with a sense of directness into “Two Million Stones,” which wants nothing for crunch but eases the forward thrust to sit back on the groove just a bit while keeping tension in double-time hi-hat during the verses and the taut cycles of riff around which those verses are constructed. Like “Alien Tactics” before it, there’s shred to be had in the solo, but the big wash at the finish culminates in a stop and the momentum carries them into the penultimate “Paranoidium,” in which they bring their full tonal brunt to bear, with a float overhead but terrestrial chug beneath and the vocals somewhere in the middle, maybe overwhelmed, surrounded by it all, but using that energy.
Like “Pursuit Special” or “Church of the Red Museum,” “Paranoidium” works in the band’s established balance of space and crush, seeming to unify the varying sides of what they’ve done to that point into a single crux. That this happens ahead of the closing title-track, which for all I know might have started to come together as a Pike song for their intended LP of the same name, and is at the very least a culmination for side B to that point, “Alien Tactics” and “Two Million Stones” finding a kind of resolution in “Paranoidium” before the seven-minute “Esox Lucifer” caps with its own procession, led into by fuzzy bass and drums before the guitar enters the fore of the mix as part of the first-minute intro, soon consumed by more metallic leaning chug crush and a cleaner-sung verse with backing shouts and a rawer, pushier hook. A nod emerges from this beginning, and they cycle through again before a bridge gradually pulls toward more atmospheric instrumentalism — is that a Mellotron or just a guitar effect? it could be a Mellotron — but it’s telling that the last minute or two of “Esox Lucifer,” rather than an all-go blowout for the more pummeling elements, is spent dwelling in the reaches the song has cast.
Esox Lucifer might ultimately be a parable of the band-between, as 10,000 Years‘ progression has brought them to a place where sludge metal, heavy-and-sometimes-progressively-so rock, thrash as noted and various other niches blend together to create a sound that is aggressive but broader in mood than just pissed off. At their rawest they are nasty, but the three-piece cover a deceptive swath and have never sounded more cognizant of the multifaceted nature of what they do. This gives Esox Lucifer a feeling or purpose for being what it is, that however long it took them to get there, it’s what they wanted it to be, and their delivery carries all the more force for that.
