Mefitic – Woes of Mortal Devotion
This is such an awesome name for a band, even though it’s a spelling variation. Who cares? It sounds so Goddamned vile it pleases one to speak it aloud to others. To what are you listening, friend? Mefitic. To which they shirk in horror, knowing only from the staticy bile coming from your ears that it’s probably best they don’t ask about anything else. But there might be a few daring souls out there, soon to lose those very souls that make them so daring, as this ethereal essence of their persistence past death is touched by the lecherous fingers of this disgusting pile of impurity. The blackened hands on the cover are no mere symbols, no mere art, they shall reach from the ripe symbolism surrounding them to run their fingers over parts of you even your significant other dare not touch. Oh God, no, if I believed in you I’d pray away this sinfulness. These hands, this band, they’re…doing things to me…I am finished, I am blasphemed. There’s just something so enjoyable about listening to an album that sickens what part of your soul may remain to the point of unplugging its own life support. Sometimes we just need it in such a way.
And you know what? We’re not going to bother pulling out a million band references like some people do, one in particular we keep deriding even though we’ll never name them directly. They do not deserve it after downvoting an album such as this. Is the production murky? Yes, and you expect that as soon as you see it, and further as soon as the first few seconds molest your aural orifices (ears). Will it remind you of things? Most likely, yes, but really other than the most unique, doesn’t everything anymore? To hell with name-dropping, we say. To hell with allowing that to be considered a detriment to a band’s sound, we say. Sometimes you just want it a certain way and that’s all there is to it, you want to add another disc to the pile of filth, perhaps chosen at random one day, perhaps on purpose.
And to this pile we add Woes of Mortal Devotion. When the riffing begins, covered in the dust of rot, there really isn’t anything further to discover. To some, understandably, that may be somewhat disappointing, but Mefitic isn’t trying to develop something new here, they’re trying to show you how much life is left in that skeleton with which you continue to bed now and again just because you like to. Like a modern Theda Bara, you stroke its ribs, straddle its hip bones, while running your tongue along the lines of its skull. Is this thing on which you release your passion dead? Yes, of course, but that’s the point of it. If you’re trying to find something more you probably shouldn’t be listening to it in the first place, or at least past the first few minutes. Mefitic have a tendency to go from riff storm to riff wave, that is from massive walls of atmospheric build primarily accomplished with tremolo to battering, back-and-again clarity where each note is suddenly conceived. Its essence lies entirely in confusion followed by lucidity, collapsing the listener with its blaspheming and then awakening in the same moment with a nice shot of smelling salts up the nose, to only begin once more. Of course, if you’re looking for genre-breaking insanity, that’s not here, but what is is sufficient to please that little black mephit inside all of us looking for a little action of the most “don’t talk about this in public” sort.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
Mefitic: Woes of Mortal Devotion
Nuclear War Now! Productions
4.4 / 5
