Taking one’s time with his or her craft is not something for which everyone has patience. There’s a big do-it-now philosophy that pushes so many people, and the virtue of patience is basically out the window. We’re probably all guilty of that from time to time, but letting things breathe and develop can make a venture turn out even better than first imagined.
I’m not sure if that was the exact impetus behind Mefitic taking a full decade together to finally release a debut full-length, but it sure works out in their favor on the monstrous, bruising “Woes of Mortal Devotion.” This pounding eight-track first opus sounds like the product of hard work and devotion to their sound. Yeah, the band has sprinkled a series of demos, a couple of split efforts, and a 2012 EP since their formation in 2004, but all of that has been building toward this nicely paced and served 40-minute cruncher that finally is reaching underground miscreants. Served up by Nuclear War Now! Productions, this Italian band’s initial foray into destroying our senses is fiery, warped, and chaotic, but also well played and excellently executed.
The four players who embody Mefitic—bassist/vocalist G., guitarists KrN and AtroR, and drummer Axor—unleash hellish and stormy murk into this record, and it should hit home with anyone who consumes anything else this label offers, as well as bands such as Abyssal, Portal, Impetuous Ritual, Incantation, and other sooty creations like those. You’re not going to find choruses to sing back or anything remotely approaching accessibility for the masses, but that’s the way this should be. It’s dark, filthy, guttural, occult-based death metal that chars and churns your senses and leaves you mentally disfigured.
“Grievous Subsidence” opens the record in a haze of eerie noise before it rips apart and heads into muddy pounding. The vocals sound infernal and destructive, rumbling just under the din, while the band hits a massive groove that will shake your insides thoroughly. A razor sharp riff emerges, and the song then ramps into top speed that takes the track to its finish. “Obloqui” has roiling riffs and suffocating tempos, with the vocals mostly lurching and crawling (but with growls rising higher toward back half) and an end that comes without warning. “Noxious Epiclesis” has a weird start, which should cause eyebrows to furrow, and then it slips into an oppressive, slow-driving assault that mashes dangerously. The pace eventually breaks open with savage vocals, dense playing, and a newfound level of intensity. “Eroding the Oblates of the Lord 2” lets guitars cascade down like sheets of rain, with damaged melodies marring the scene, warped playing causing further confusion, and voices spiraling through the picture. The final moments apply the pressure again, with deep growls and a fade out.
“Mendacious Plasmodia” is fast and murky, with the sounds creating a storm, hypnotic speaking laced through the track, bells chiming, and a sense of horror coloring this instrumental cut. “The Tomb of Amaleq” has growls boiling beneath the surface, while guitars drive up the heat index, and then it’s into a crushing burst of playing that sounds like war has broken out. The growls later are warbled, as if howled from a fever dream, and the riffs coil and strike as the attack multiplies and keeps pounding away. “Pain” pours on the fury, with the growls caked in soot and the sounds boring their way into your soul. The guitars blister, with strange melodies arriving later and the song grinding all the way to its finish. Closer “The Swirling Columns of Staleness” perhaps is a strike out against the bulk of the commercialized death metal world, as the track dizzies with its speed and sounds like it is trying to remove layers of flesh with each blow. The vocals seem like they’re baking in a furnace, with the music blinding you with terror and the track coming to a muddy, doom-infested conclusion.
Mefitic’s charnel, hell-baked debut record was worth the wait, and certainly the time they put into crafting their sound paid dividends. “Woes of Mortal Devotion” gives those who hunger for true metal of death another band to indulge in, not to mention it’ll scare the hell out of your everyday, uninhabited listener. This sounds like it is on fire and smoking heavily for its entire run time, and won’t your poor lungs feel the pain once it’s all over.
For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mefitic/453108608054358?fref=ts
To buy the album, go here: http://nwnprod.com/shop/
For more on the label, go here: http://www.nwnprod.com/
Meat Mead Metal 