Review : by TekNoir
 
The American rhythmic industrial project ESA, which is a project from Jamie Blacker, and stands for Electronic Substance Abuse, after various contributions to high-profile industrial-noise compilation cd’s such as Fuck, Das Bunker and Rhythms for Decay, now has the first cd out via Hive records and it hits the bull’s eye. With this the German industrial scene that seems to have had a bit of a drawback, developed further towards experiment, or yet focusses on accessible club industrial, gets a lesson how to do it. While earlier on Iszoloscope, Terrorfakt, Scrap.edx, C/A/T and W.A.S.T.E made up the more well known names in a new league of heavy industrial-noise, you can now add a project such as ESA to that. Labels like Hive and Crunch Pod determine the agenda and with this release they again show why. ESA produces heavy beats, with an industrial sound, consisting of sinister soundscapes and hard rhythms, that attack your ear drums. This ESA album is divided into three sections, with the first part that is named Devotion being fast-paced, the Discipline section taking it towards more fast rhythm action starting with the track ‘Nerve Pattern’, and the third part named Denial, offering more experiment and variation in unfluences that have been used in the forceful industrial noise of ESA. Ranging from EBM and electro (‘Satan is Real’) to gothic (‘Fruits of Self-Loathing’) and world music (‘To Bear the Countless Harvests of Unremitting Religious Hypocrisy’). ‘Cutslut’ en ‘Say No to Emo’ are obvious floorfillers. ‘Devoted Contortions’ has been remixed very harsh and hard by Scrap.edx. With Devotion, Discipline and Denial the standard has been set quite high and, the eventually by Converter and Sonar influenced ,ESA has become a force to reckon with for competitors in the industrial-noise scene.

Link : http://www.gothtronic.com/?page=23&reviews=3139

Dark Live Fest 3 review by Polish Magazine : Alternation
 
The first project that played that evening was Electronic Substance Abuse (ESA). The project started in 2004 and the aim of J.Blacker – the author – is to combine the opposing music genres and – as he himself claims – to make a dance floor a bit less cosy and more gloomy place:) Inspired by such artists as Converter and Sonar he creates his own version of harsh and yet intelligent music. You may check up his ideas on the album released by Hive Records in 2006 - 'Devotion Discipline and Denial'.
In Prague I was lucky enough to see the said machine in action. The music of ESA is surprising: it's a blend of delicate a bit threatening sounds (“Satan is Real”) with the hitting dose of noise, grating sounds and rumbling beats. I must admit that it rarely happens that the festivals open with such good acts – DLF was an exception – as the concert of ESA, aside from those of Displacer and S.K.E.T, was one of the best of the whole event. The pace was fast, changeable; it was like riding a car that stops and changes direction all the time. After such a crazy trip bit of smoothing, fragile tones appeared, but a threat was still present in the background .
Most of the tracks, e.g. „We all know the world is wrong” have a great speed and even danceable quality, and they feature the mixture of sounds that remain rubbing glass with the sand paper ( it's not painful though and even if it its it's a sweet pain :) with those well known electro beats that regulate the rhythm – the whole thing is brilliant! The vocal appeared sporadically, it was a kinda contesting, scanning one, but at certain moment a gentle female voice occurred in the jungle of the machine noise and the effect constituted a fine contrast between the violence of sound and subtlety of voice.
J. Blaker gave harsh and dynamic concert. All was hidden in darkness: only the green strobo light was dancing on the faces of the listeners and cut the air. Great show!
Setlist:
1.How pure would your utopia be? 2. Belief Conversion 3. We all know the world is wrong 4. Nerve Pattern 5. Say no to Emo 6. Satan is Real 7. Undernourished Halo 8. Fruits of Self Loathing 9. Randomly selected drawbacks of the human condition.

Black Harvest review :
 
Those of us aware of the existence of ESA have been awaiting his debut album for some time, his gigs have always sounded great and he's become one of those people to look out for. But enough about what he's done. What about the CD sat in front of me? Well, imagine Scott Sturgis and Bill Leeb could biologically have a child and then their relationship goes sour and they split up. Due to the divorce settlement the child spends most of the time during the week with Dad1 Scott and spends the weekend with Dad2 Bill. Then this child when it reached adulthood was asked to write an album.   I would imagine it would sound something like this. ESA have managed to take some of the best elements of Powernoise and   old style electro-industrial and merge them together seamlessly in a way which I think fans of both will appreciate. The CD also has some sublimely different moments, like on the 2nd track where it spends a large part   of the start building up a Sturgis style rhythm and then brings in pads followed by a metal guitar line flipping from left to right carrying   the beat along with it, or "We all know the world is wrong" which manages   to sound like a cross between Converter and Delerium (I know that sounds impossible, but listen to it and you'll see what I mean) and pulls it off with ease. This isn't to say the album is perfect. Like a lot of albums it gets a bit wobbly around track 7 but it brings itself back up and manages to hold one surprise back, which is the penultimate track which seems   to have no distortion on it and doesn't lack power because of it. Devotion, Discipline and Denial is a crispy stomp-fest which will tear up dance-floors but also holds enough originality and meat on the bones to be of interest to those who eschew the dance-floor. Highly Recommended. 9/10 KEITH.

Connexion Bizarre Review.
 
With this debut release from the British ESA (Electronic Substance Abuse) Hive records is supposedly "bringing the fucking beats back". Luckily ESA are bringing a whole lot more and manage to find their own sound in the heavily over-subscribed Power Noise scene.
After the rickety sound-effects and mounting tension of the obligatory intro track, "Manipulating God", the album kicks in with "Belief Conversion". A repeated sample gives way to mid-tempo rhythms and beat patterns build up and overlay as the song progresses. Sharper percussive phrases then weave their way into the mix and so the song progresses, playing with these elements to cast a dark, hypnotic spell. So far, so typical - not unlike any of classic Ant Zen acts. As the song nears the two-thirds mark, fun things start to happen: slow synths fade in and take hold, pushing melody over the distortion while buried Asian voices bubble under, flipping the emotion of the song to lush powerful sadness. It's where Manufactura meets Delerium to devastating effect.
The pattern is repeated on the next cut, the excellent "We All Know the World is Wrong" as piercing loop and multi-layered metallic rhythms gradually succumb to bubbling synths and sweet haunting sweeps with a beautiful eastern-inspired vocal and even a funky bass line for a few bars. Again, all elements come together to flesh out the typical powernoise tropes into something melodic and emotionally captivating.
After these stunning tracks, the album kicks the tempo up for a hard, fast mid-section that should light up any noise-floor. These songs, though definitely good DJ weapons, do not inspire the way the opening tracks did though they highlight ESA's understanding that sometimes softening a sound up allows another to sound much harsher. These songs also confirm the suspicion that ESA has only one approach to song-structure - using repetition and multi-layering to create a hypnotic sound before flipping something on its head for the final minutes. It is a structure he shows a mastery of but it does begin to grate when the pay-offs do not match those of the earlier tracks.
The final third of the album brings the tempos right back down and brings the melody to the fore combining tribal-esque rhythms with choral sounds and dark synths like a cross between early Enigma and Monolith. Hyponotic as always, these songs intrigue but never quite hit the spot. A pounding mix by Scrape.dx closes the album while bringing it full circle stylistically.
Overall ESA have created a very interesting album that, while only partially satisfying, indicates they have the potential to outshine many of their peers. Definitely an act to follow.

-- Christopher Fry [7.5/10]

Review of Devotion Discipline and Denial by asw909:

E.S.A. | Devotion, Discipline and Denial | Hive
Another week, another noise album - despite it appearing to be a reasonably small "scene" there does seem to be a real vitality across the breadth of the noise spectrum at the moment, with release after release trying something just that little different, although not all are entirely successful in meeting what they are trying to achieve.This, I'm glad to report, is an album of the highest quality. It is also a slightly strange animal, too, with it being meticulously constructed into three separate sections (the 'Devotion', 'Discipline' and 'Denial' of the album title), which really do have a quite different feel to each of them.The album starts very slowly indeed, with Manipulating God being little more than a slow-burning intro track, which works nicely into Belief Conversion, which is where the first of the surprises appear - clever use of Rotersand vocal samples across a drilling and incessant beat, before moving up yet another gear into We All Know The World Is Wrong, with the ugly, twisted metal of the beats are tempered by a swooning female vocal putting the world to rights.The 'Discipline' section begins with the thumping noise of Nerve Patterns, and pushes the ante yet further with Say No To Emo, more clever sampling intertwined with some quite brutal beats in Cutslut, followed by probably the pick of the bunch - Test. Same pattern - familiar sample, then beats and noises arrive to beat you round the head - but instead of leaving you bleeding and wheezing, simply leaves you smiling at just how good this is.Final section 'Denial' changes things again, suppressing the beats in the main behind a thick fog of effects, creating a softer cushion to fall on - although not soft enough to dull the impact of Satan Is Real, or indeed The Fruits of Self-Loathing. Really odd, though, is the last track The Misconception of Zen - it has a much more mellow feel, after the tense rage of the rest of the CD - and acts as a good comedown to close.There is one more track, though, the Scrap.edx-credited Devoted Contortions - another pounding track that perhaps sits a little uncomfortably at the end of such a cohesive whole.That is actually the winning factor in this album - there is a clear concept to the album, that has been well thought through, what with the running order, the flow, the witty and clever titles, hell, even the samples are well-used and integral to the tracks they appear in. And the whole result? One of the best noise albums I have ever heard, and a strong contender for the best album I will hear in all of 2006.